The Expert Podcast

Well, I guess it's not Margaritaville and Jimmy Buffett's estate. There's a lot of battling going on in conflicts over $275 million from the estate of uh famous musician Jimmy Buffett. What's happened was the different parties to the estate, the trustees and the the heirs and the people who are receiving um you know inheritance from Jimmy Buffett after he died are fighting each other. And this gets back to what we see all the time with probate fraud. Now, in this case, it may not be fraud, but there's people that are thinking they should get more than they're supposed to get. And so, the widow and the estate, they're suing each other.

Uh it's an important lesson for families planning wealth transfers. And we see this a lot. We see this where clients come to us and say, "Look, you know, my grandfather died, my parents died, whatever it is, and I think that one of the family members is taking more than they should. I think one of the family members may have been diverting assets. They may have emptied out bank accounts. They may have sold real estate. Um, I think I I found out that my sister signed over a car to their son to drive, right? We're seeing this probate fraud at different levels almost every time. And whether or not it's actually criminal fraud or just improper transfers, what's called a fraudulent conveyance.

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U that can be determined later. The most important thing is to get the money where it's supposed to go. So the first thing you want to do is have a very very comprehensive audit of the estate to make sure that all the money is accounted for. You know where it is and then you can decide according to the will or if there's no will according to the wishes of the deedent where that money is supposed to go. Uh unless you know where the money is to begin with you don't know if it went to the wrong place or somebody took it improperly.

Also, if you can find that somebody took money improperly, that may also reduce what they would get even if they were supposed to get some inheritance from the estate. Most important thing is don't let people get away with taking from the estate what doesn't belong to them. It's an insult to the person who died. It's a it's a disrespect of their wishes and it also enables the person who's stealing the money to think that what they're doing isn't wrong.

So if you have a person in your family who's recently died, could be a parent, a grandparent, aunt, uncle, and you believe that somebody in the family is taking more than they're supposed to, make sure you get a good audit. You can click the link below to get some information about that. You get a good accounting, uh you get good forensics, you have an investigation done on assets, asset searching, asset tracing to make sure that nobody is taking more than they're supposed to, and more importantly that you you get what you are supposed to get.

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