Thirty years ago, as an enthusiastic law school student eager to make my mark on the world, my interest focused on estate planning. Coming from a working-class home with little in the way of wealth, I was fascinated with acquiring and handling money. Learning what rich people do with their money

would be exciting, I thought, and perhaps a little would fall my way.

Soon I was able to create bulletproof wills and trusts (or so I thought) and save gobs of estate taxes for my clients. I admitted to myself that this is not the most exciting area of law, but I decided to trade excitement for a stable income.

In the late 1970s, I relocated from New England to south Florida to escape the harsh winters and help wealthy clients who had also moved from the north to find excitement in their later years. At that time, thousands of retirees were moving to Florida every day with truckloads of money to buy cheap real estate, play golf, do some fishing, and relax. In south Florida, all sorts of northern transplants search for and find his or her place in the sun. Northern transplants were, and still are, overwhelming the local population in numbers and changing Florida forever. As a fellow transplant, I fit right in.

In the Sunshine State, entire cities are created or and populated by transplants who have left their extended families and friends in the snowy north to search for a new start in life. At first, their ties to their past are strong. They travel back home on holidays and host friends from the north during the winter months. Gradually, those urges to visit “back home” dwindle as life in their “new home” becomes more fulfilling. I too came around to the popular transplant conclusion about traveling up north for the winter holidays: “So what if there is no snow for Christmas? We can always go to the beach.”

My plan was working superbly. My law practice thrived. I helped clients plan to pass their wealth to their beneficiaries while saving tons of taxes to provide a more affluent lifestyle for those beneficiaries, and this gave my clients peace of mind. Although I loved the clients and the interaction, regrettably my work became repetitive. I needed more excitement.

One day a lawyer in New York telephoned me. He told me he represented the son of one of my clients, a well-off retiree from New York. I had prepared a trust, will, and power of attorney for my client, who was perfectly competent and lucid at the time. My work was well done. My client had named his three children as the sole beneficiaries of his estate. The client chose to give his son a power of attorney, and a second power of attorney to his “best friend,” who lived in Florida. As it turned out, his best friend was his new girlfriend he had met soon after moving to Florida. I had never met her, but my client trusted her and needed someone in Florida to help if he became disabled. My client said she was loving and attentive to my client’s wishes and was, in his mind at the time, the logical choice. I warned my client about the potential dangers in giving anyone, except the most trusted persons, a power of attorney. My client acknowledged that a power of attorney might be abused by some people, but assured me that I need not be concerned with his choice. 

Not long after our meeting, my client experienced serious health problems. Unable to handle his finances, he soon turned control of his finances to his “best friend.” She took that opportunity to use the power of attorney I had prepared to convert my client’s bank accounts to joint ownership accounts with herself. This was done “for convenience,” she later testified under oath. The legal proceeding that followed revealed she was systematically draining those accounts and transferring assets to her personal account, and also to her adult child’s personal account. Only after expensive and lengthy litigation did my client’s children recover some of what the girlfriend had stolen.

Had I overlooked something while counseling my client? After reflecting, I knew I would not have been able to dissuade my client from naming his “best friend” as his power of attorney. He was convinced he was making the right decision. I concluded that my client was an isolated victim of a rare occurrence: theft by a loved one. I soon learned how very naïve my conclusion was.

The temptation to steal an inheritance has a powerful pull. In my short life, I had not experienced temptation strong enough to overwhelm better judgment and cause an otherwise honest and generous person to act as they never imagined they would. Under ordinary circumstances, my client’s “best friend” was an average person and honest in her everyday dealings with her fellow man. Yet the opportunity to take advantage of my client with little perceived risk resulted in her making a dishonest woman of herself. During the

trial she revealed justifications she fabricated to ease her guilt over her theft. It

was fascinating to see how she had crossed the line from honest to dishonest

in tiny, easy-to-rationalize steps.

Soon after, another client retained me to investigate whether his elderly mother’s new will, signed two months before her death, was valid. The will disinherited my client. After a lengthy investigation and trial, the court overturned the new will, finding that my client’s brother had exerted undue influence on his mother in an attempt to steal the estate for himself.

At the same time I defended the girlfriend of a man who willed his estate to her, thereby disinheriting his children who all but ignored him in his old age. The girlfriend cared for the man for an extended period of time during

his last illness. As a reward, he made a will giving her his modest estate. This was done without her knowledge. The court ruled my client did not cause her boyfriend to unlawfully disinherit his children and upheld the will.

A door had opened for me. I was hooked on the intrigue found in inheritance litigation. It soon grew to be a large part of my practice. A good inheritance lawyer must be a student of human nature, psychology, and the darker side of family dynamics. Litigating estate disputes, particularly among family members, reveals the human condition at its raw core. I became a psychoanalyst as well as a legal analyst, and became acquainted with facets of the

human condition that surprised, repulsed, and encouraged me. Within a few

years I realized that practicing inheritance law and litigation is as exciting as

any John Grisham legal thriller. Since that first case, I have handled disputes

in hundreds of estates valued from a few thousand dollars up to an estimated

hundred million dollars. I am still learning and still excited about the work.

Every new case is a new look inside the human experience.

I still believe that most people are honest and want to do the right thing for their fellow man. However, everyone has their tipping point into dishonest behavior. This is especially true in the realm of inheritances, where family dynamics, old grudges, and jealousies play a powerful role. These factors impact

the relationships and lower the tipping point in an amount equal to the intensity

of the grudge or jealousy. In family inheritance disputes, the tipping point

is often very low and easily reached. In such disputes, the pain inflicted by and

upon all parties is usually enough to permanently damage lifelong relationships. This was a hard lesson I came to learn from experience, not from books.

I can tell you that no family is immune from hijacking. Money is only paper or a number on a bank statement unless it is used for some purpose. In many family inheritance situations, the purpose may be to bring revenge on a family member using the stolen inheritance as the tool. Inheritance disputes mix family money with family history. Often, the result is close family relationships being destroyed forever.

Family money may appear to be the center of the inheritance dispute, but the money alone is rarely the cause of the problems that led to the dispute. Dysfunctional family dynamics, perhaps unrecognized for decades, are the root cause. In my experience, a perfectly functioning family unit does not exist. Any family claiming to have such a perfectly functioning unit is blind to the true facts and the potential dangers they face. This does not mean that there will be inheritance disputes in all families. It is a warning that inheritance disputes can arise in any family. Wise family members will guard against inheritance conflicts.

Families can be dysfunctional in many ways. The opportunities increase with the number of siblings, number of marriages and divorces, physical distance between family members, and the difficulty or infrequency of communication and oversight among family members.

Although theft of money is the weapon used to seek revenge, the amount of money involved is often not important. A small inheritance is coveted in the same way a large inheritance is coveted. Money is the convenient weapon in this forum. Often the situation is perceived to be the last opportunity to seek revenge on another, and the hijacker’s actions are the desperate work of a tormented person.

The revenge may be sought for some insult or wrong done years ago. Perhaps mom or dad seemed to favor one child over another, and the deprived child desires to compensate for that loss by taking his sibling’s rightful inheritance. How often is a sister unable to tell her sister that she is suffering emotionally from something the sister did or did not do? If the off ended sister cannot forget and forgive, the situation festers, causing resentment over time. If the sisters cannot talk it out, the dispute is usually settled in another way. Perhaps an insult will do. Perhaps the opportunity to deprive the off ending sister of part or all of her inheritance will present itself. Perhaps the only way a hurting person can seek revenge on a deceased rival sibling is to deprive the deceased sibling’s child.

The possibilities are as numerous and complex as the human mind. Many motivators are irrational and founded in half-truths or distorted perceptions of an incident. Powerful motivators may be hidden or suppressed for decades until the opportunity to right the wrong presents itself.

While the amount of money involved is not important, the impact that money has on the other party is crucial. If mom dies with ten thousand dollars in the bank and your brother desperately wants his share of the ten thousand dollars, you can inflict real pain on your brother by depriving him of that money. If mom dies with one million dollars in the bank and your brother has ten million dollars of his own, he will fight for his share because the gift represents love from his mother.

In most cases the inheritance thief is seen as stealing the dignity of the victims, as well as the love attached to every inheritance, in addition to the material assets. There is no greater crime, especially between family members.

Experience has proven that this principle is cast in stone. In disputes between family members, the hijacker’s motivation is never the cash and nothing but the cash. There is always an underlying psychological factor that compels the hijacker to take advantage of his or her family members. There are exceptions to every rule, but I have yet to find one in family relationships. The victims may not see beyond greed as the motivation for the theft. However, close and objective scrutiny of the relationship between the thief and the victim will reveal other motivations buried within the psyches of the parties.

Although most perpetrators are family members, there is a second class of thief that is related to the victim. Anyone in a confidential or close relationship with another can attempt to steal an estate. This includes caregivers, housekeepers, accountants, business advisors, lovers, bankers, lawyers, friends, and business associates. This class of thief is motivated more by the money than emotional needs and calculates more in cold blood, with little emotional investment in the relationships.

A person in good physical and mental health is capable of protecting himself from a greedy, scheming thief. The exceptions are when love and passion get in the way of good sense. As old age and physical and mental infirmities set in, once robust and capable people become dependent on others and more likely to become a victim. This is not to say that theft of an inheritance will occur at every opportunity. Many people are honest to a fault. However, trusting your inheritance to chance is not wise. It is better to be vigilant and safe than overly trusting and sorry.