Mateya Law Administrator

We were asked to help administer an estate in which two siblings, who cannot agree whether the sun rises in the east, were the main beneficiaries. The estate was not too large, under a million dollars, and had as many non-probate assets as probate assets. The hope was that we could navigate the waters peacefully.

One of the siblings was the named executor of the Last Will & Testament. The other, non-executor sibling, brought the paperwork to his attorney (not Mateya Law Firm; we were brought in to try to restore the peace) without the executor’s knowledge. Wait, shouldn’t that Attorney […]

A gentleman came in to probate his wife’s estate. This can be a difficult time in anyone’s life, losing a loved one. We discussed the necessary issues of the medical bills, the final arrangements and how the funeral was paid for, all of which were fairly predictable. Then I asked him how long he and his wife had been married.

“We never actually got married. We always said that it was just a piece of paper.”

I then had to break the news to him that his partner’s estate, which all passed to him through her Last Will & Testament, would be […]

A client came into my office last week with her daughter; I’ll call her Mrs. Smith.  Mrs. Smith, who is in her mid seventies, asked if I could help her sort out the trouble she is having with her finances.   She has a trust and several other documents which an attorney and a financial advisor sold to her, but she doesn’t really understand how they work. She said that ‘no one would talk to her’ about her trust without billing her for every moment they spoke with her. She doesn’t want to have her money tied up like that, but she was told […]