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Question:

I have a rather complicated scenario that started as a result of my taking on paying my mother‘s bills when I discovered that she had stopped doing so. During this time, my brother moved in and was living with my mother 100% off of her financial resources. He turned the house into a hoarder house. The upstairs was full of his stuff and a fire hazard. He also didn’t clean anything. The house was always filthy whenever my sister and I visited there, which hurt her health.

I reported my mother’s situation twice to elder protective services. The case manager spoke with my brother who bald face lied to her, and said that I stole my mother‘s home from her by convincing her to sell me the house for a dollar. The house was in a trust for my mother‘s benefit until the day she died. It was never my house. The case manager who never held a family meeting, never did any due diligence of any kind, never asked for any documentation or paperwork from my sister or myself. Instead, she went to court and filed for a conservator which got appointed without our presence in the courtroom because the law firm gave my sister the incorrect courtroom information. So while we were in the courthouse building, the proceedings took place without us being there because we were at the incorrect courtroom.

Now that my mom has passed away, the conservator is now trying to extort $56,000 from my mothers estate for five months of work. I’ve never seen any documentation of any kind or accounting of any kind.  It would take me less than an hour a month to pay her bills, so this amount of demand by this conservator is quite excessive unnecessary and inappropriate.  I would appreciate any advice and guidance you might be willing to share.

Response:

That’s a very difficult situation following a long and difficult history. The conservator appears not to have accomplished much and their bill seems to just add to the financial burden of your mother’s situation.

However, the conservator does have the right to be paid for its services. And lawyers, unfortunately, are expensive. While the simple act of paying bills should not take much time, it can take a lot of time in the beginning to get everything set up, including traveling to banks or investment firm offices to be added to accounts.

The conservator should provide a billing record justifying their charges. See if that’s available in the court record. If it’s not, you can ask the court clerk for guidance on how to get a court order that be produced.

Assuming that the conservator can show the hours they spent, the one area that may be open for challenge is their hourly rate. Lawyers typically charge their full hourly rate for whatever they do as conservator, but this can get exorbitant when they are spending a lot time doing what a paralegal or bookkeeper could have been doing at a lower rate. You may look at the time charges and challenge those that could have been carried out by non-lawyer at a lower fee.

You could also hire an attorney to advise you on this and represent you in court, but that would, of course, mean spending more money out of your own pocket.

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