Fixing Broken Plans
Many clients come to us with existing documents or past transactions that are not aligned with current needs or objectives. These situations arise from a variety of factors including:
- Changed circumstances
- Changed laws
- Document drafting errors
- Poor legal advice
- No legal advice / "DIY planning"
As just a few examples, we have successfully helped clients:
- Terminate a private foundation the clients were defrauded into creating (which included a recovery of the real estate they donated to that foundation)
- Retroactively restore a right of survivorship that had been inadvertently severed by a clerical error at a title company
- Retroactively fix issues that caused property tax reassessments (and collect refunds of excess taxes paid as a result of the reassessments)
- Modify planning documents and transmute community property to separate property to enable an incapacitated spouse to qualify for Medi-Cal benefits
- Terminate or modify irrevocable trusts that had become uneconomical to administer or that were not fulfilling their original purpose
We don't have a magic wand we can wave to fix every problem situation, but there are things we can do in many cases, even when it seems like it may be "too late."