No pepper-spray either with Free Elder Law Webinars for CLE credit.

Additional year-end CLE possibilities are provided below for the remaining procrastinators still short of year-end continuing legal education credit hours. I picked up 1.5 credit hours this week and didn’t have to risk pepper spray-by-shopper amongst the holiday crowds. I attended the Webinar, “Guardian Accountability and Monitoring: Where Do We Stand?” presented under the auspices [...]

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When families squabble over an estate, often only the lawyers win.

Unfortunately, none of the principals are reflected in a very good light in Sunday’s tale by John Leland,“Love and Inheritance: Anatomy of a Family Feud,” at NYTimes.com. The cast of characters starts with movie star Celeste Holm, now 94-years old, a bit addled, not in a good health, and married to a man almost half [...]

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Probate court reform committee issues final report and leaves no [head]stone unturned.

Not to diminish the substantive good work found in the Final Report just issued by the “Committee on Improving Judicial Oversight and Processing of Probate Court Matters” but one recommendation sure to garner notice is the proposal that the Arizona Legislature “could assess $1 for issuance of a death certificate, which could be paid to [...]

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Probate court rejects Last Will where undisclosed lawyer’s girlfriend was named decedent’s pet caretaker.

Doesn’t matter if you’re Leona Helmsley’s dog, the Maltese Trouble, or one of the lesser known dogs and cats of Kay Elaine Johnston discussed below. Seems you just can’t leave big bucks to your pets – – – not unless you do everything strictly by the book and especially, without monkey business.  Last summer, there [...]

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If anyone’s listening, here’s a way to cut through the competing probate reform noise at the AZ Legislature.

For anyone not already tone deaf with a case of earsplitting self-interest, a court-appointed attorney in Maricopa County, Arizona’s Probate Court offers his own cogent solution to what’s become a contest of the dueling probate reformers at the state capitol. The attorney’s name is Jon D. Kitchel and he’s in private practice. Currently, two bills, [...]

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Sun Valley Group goes ‘bye-bye’ as postscript to case of Marie Long.

The Sun Valley Group, Inc., a licensed professional fiduciary service and the former guardians of Marie Long, has announced they are ceasing their fiduciary business in Arizona and are closing up shop. See “Major fiduciary firm is going out of business.” I blogged several times about this infuriating topic last year at “To track financial [...]

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The staggering obviousness of preventing Pyrrhic probate fees.

Pyrrhus of Epirus won a battle but was so depleted by it, he lost the war. The lessons of Pyrrhus are easily forgotten when it comes to money, especially when the money being depleted is not your own. As Francois de La Rochefoucauld once said,“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.” [...]

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Re. Probate Court Matters: Judicial Oversight Court Improvement Committee issues interim report.

Hell for Sisyphus was to ceaselessly push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down to push back up again. A similar unavailing ceaselessness redounds in seeking the elusive solutions to reforming guardianship of the vulnerable elderly. But it’s not a boulder that comes to mind. Instead, it’s a wheel that’s [...]

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“It’s deja vu all over again,” as local paper investigates Maricopa County’s Probate Court.

A multi-part journalistic investigative series, Maricopa County Probate Court – Life savings, freedom taken away, kicked off in this morning’s Arizona Republic. Written by reporters Robert Anglen and Pat Kossan, it’s worthwhile reading. Yet the inquiry and its conclusion has that pinch-me Yogi Berra feeling of, “it’s deja vu all over again.” The report talks [...]

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Of guardianship fees and saving villages by destroying them.

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” is a favorite and oft-used quote of a lawyer friend. The quote was originally attributed to an unnamed Vietnam War-era U.S. major about the Vietnamese provincial town of Bến Tre, which was bombed and shelled regardless of civilian casualties in order to rout the [...]

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