The Missing Million: When Family Greed Hijacks Your Inheritance

Episode Description

Discover the shocking truth about inheritance theft and what you can do to protect your rightful assets. This episode explores how trustees and estate executors sometimes hide, steal, or mismanage inheritances, leaving heirs empty-handed. Learn the warning signs and your legal rights as a beneficiary.

Key Topics Covered:

• Trust and estate investigations - Why many cases involve hidden or missing assets from wills, trusts, and probate proceedings
• Trustee duty violations - How executors and trustees are legally required to keep beneficiaries informed but often fail to do so
• Legal obligations of trustees - Every state has statutes requiring trustees to reasonably inform beneficiaries about trust administration and asset disclosure
• Red flags to watch for - When trustees give you the runaround, keep you in the dark, or refuse to disclose asset transfers and locations
• Self-protection strategies - Why beneficiaries should document everything and conduct independent asset searches before confronting trustees
• Asset tracing techniques - How to discover what assets should rightfully be yours through proper investigation and documentation
• Common inheritance theft scenarios - Missing stock shares, properties that don't appear in probate reports, and other valuable assets that mysteriously disappear
• Accidental vs. intentional theft - How trustees sometimes squander assets through negligence or deliberately steal from estates
• Your rights as an heir - Legal protections available to beneficiaries and how to exercise them effectively
• Taking action - Steps to confront trustees with evidence and recover missing inheritance assets

Takeaway Message:

Don't leave your inheritance to chance. Document everything, conduct your own asset search, and hold trustees accountable for what's rightfully yours. 

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Many times the investigations that we do have to do with a trust or a will or probate and our client, the victim is concerned because the trustee or the executive of the estate is not providing clear information. They're trying to hide things or sweep something under the rug. Many times an executive of an estate is somebody who benefits from that estate. Uh they're getting an inheritance.

And in almost every state, there is a statute that says the trustee has a duty to keep the beneficiaries reasonably informed of the trust and its administration. Basically, what that means is if there's an executive of an estate or a trustee and they're working on assets, they have to keep everybody involved, everybody in the loop of what's happening. Disclose the assets. Disclose if they're being transferred. Disclose if they're being located. They can't just keep you in the dark and give you the runaround. Most people don't know about this. In California, there's a specific code for it. Every state has this.

It's very important if you are a beneficiary or a an heir to some assets that you first document everything. You do an asset search. You do asset tracing. You get all the documents yourself. and then you ask the you will be back in your video in just a few seconds. In the meantime, remember that actualhum.com offers you live one-on-one private video consultation with an expert in this exact subject. We want to listen to your story. We want to hear your questions. We want to give you expert advisement of your options and tell you what we know about your particular situation.

Now, back to your video trustee to give you what they have because you can compare the two. You can see what the trustee says. You can see what you discovered on your own. And if there's a discrepancy now, you can go to the trustee and say, "Hey, what did you do with this? Where did you put this money? Did you transfer it improperly? Did you not find it to begin with?" Many times what you'll find find is the trustee either accidentally or intentionally squandered some of the valuable assets.

So, if you are u a relative of somebody who's become deceased and they're supposed to have an inheritance coming to you and maybe it seems like it's less than it should be or maybe there's missing assets. Some people say, you know, my grandfather had shares of IBM. I don't know where those went. I thought the person had two properties. There's only one showing up on the um on the probate report. So, you want to make sure that you're getting to the bottom of what the assets are, not leaving anything to chance so that you get what's rightfully yours and somebody doesn't take it away from you either accidentally or in many cases uh intentionally.

You can click the link below. We have more information for uh inheritance recipients about how to determine what assets should be coming to you. If you found this video helpful, be sure to click on other videos on our channel to see if there's further information that could give you more insight into resolving your particular situation.