Debts owed to an estate...

[packrat44]

We had a somewhat similar situation a few months ago when settling DF estate. Two siblings had received major lump sums when they became unemployed a few years back. The amounts they received were considered as "early disbursements" (or accounts receivable) and added back into the total estate. The division was then made according to the terms of the estate and the amounts distributed early to the two siblings were deducted from their share. No interest was considered; only the principal. This estate was in a trust which made it easier to handle.


All of us signed individual acknowledgements and agreements of the disbursements prior to actually receiving the distributions.


Sorry for my post. I did not realize this tread was so old.

 

[ERD50]

Something like:
"The remainder of the estate will be divided among my grandchildren as follows:
1. To the children of my son, their half share is to be reduced by $xxx,xxx being the amount of an unpaid loan by said son and the balance divided equally between them.
2. The remaining grandchildren will receive the unreduced amount, namely a one quarter share each of the total."

Lawyers will add many more words so there can be no room for interpretation. But the executor of the son would handle paying off any balance if the loan were documented.

IME, lawyers will add many more words, and end up still leaving (or actually creating) room for interpretation. I get the impression that many of the words are just to make them look important. But the extra words can actually add to confusion. They certainly do not use clear straight logic in the documents I've seen. My MIL's trusts had several entire sections that seemed like just filler, things totally unrelated to anything the family would be doing. The lawyer that wrote the original trusts some 20 years ago could not even explain some of the stuff that he wrote! How is another person (and the executors are lay people) supposed to read this unambiguously? When I asked about some of these sections, I just got brushed off with a 'that is standard language'. I took that to mean "our software spits that out, we have no idea why it is included".

-ERD50

 

[Texas Proud]

IME, lawyers will add many more words, and end up still leaving (or actually creating) room for interpretation. I get the impression that many of the words are just to make them look important. But the extra words can actually add to confusion. They certainly do not use clear straight logic in the documents I've seen. My MIL's trusts had several entire sections that seemed like just filler, things totally unrelated to anything the family would be doing. The lawyer that wrote the original trusts some 20 years ago could not even explain some of the stuff that he wrote! How is another person (and the executors are lay people) supposed to read this unambiguously? When I asked about some of these sections, I just got brushed off with a 'that is standard language'. I took that to mean "our software spits that out, we have no idea why it is included".

-ERD50

Since I had to deal with trust in one of my jobs, I can tell you that a lot of that 'filler' is needed because of court cases that were decided in an adverse way when those words were not included...


And lawyers steal whole sections of others work. One of the lawyers I worked with who developed mortgage backed securities showed me a section that she wrote... she wrote it in a strange way just so she could see who stole her work... it was funny to see it in EVERY MBS that I looked at....

 

[ERD50]

Since I had to deal with trust in one of my jobs, I can tell you that a lot of that 'filler' is needed because of court cases that were decided in an adverse way when those words were not included...

No doubt. But some of this was clearly superfluous additions. There was some paragraph about giving the executor the power to invest/create in some "Qualified Conservation Easement", which I read up on a bit, and might have some fancy, complex tax advantages in some specific case. But this family was not sophisticated investors and did not get involved in complex tax schemes. So are they going to list every conceivable investment opportunity, an almost infinite list? Then why spell out these?

There's more like that, and in my view, the basic "act as fiduciary" requirement should be enough w/o using paragraphs to spell out a bunch of can do x,y,z, when they add "or other suitable investments". Just a bunch of fluff.

And the important stuff they screwed up - I had to point it out to them, at first one lawyer said No, it's correct and NOT redundant - we re-read it, and it still seemed wrong/redundant - the second lawyer in the office agreed at a follow up meeting, and changed it to what we thought it should be. And these are the 'experts' (actual Estate specialists, not a 'country lawyer').

And lawyers steal whole sections of others work. One of the lawyers I worked with who developed mortgage backed securities showed me a section that she wrote... she wrote it in a strange way just so she could see who stole her work... it was funny to see it in EVERY MBS that I looked at....

It happens in other places as well. A friend told me that the company he worked for was trying to protect itself against other companies just wholesale copying their hardware. They ended up putting meaningless "do-nothing" copper traces on the PCB, as a 'fingerprint'. I guess they must have copyrighted the PCB 'artwork' (and that is the industry term used for the photo-image of the PCB traces), and I was told that held up in court, especially when the copy-cats were unable to explain the function of those traces (there was no function!).

-ERD50