Plea agreement reached in Hurst Financial fraud case

Before I go on, let me state, I am not an attorney, but relatively educated, so your repetitive complaints have got me interested.

I went to the link you provided and first off, if the attorney’s name is “Robert,” why do you keep calling him by the wrong name? If I were a friend who wanted to help you, I would ask these questions. I am not suggesting you post your personal family information here, but instead, look at my post as if I were giving you a homework assignment and asking you to complete it, step by step, then keep the information PRIVATE.

Provide the spellings of the names mentioned in your YouTube movie, so if anyone out there has the method, means and opportunity to investigate, they can do so. It sounds like you mentioned the following players:

1. Bank of Hawii, potential defendant. Provide names of anyone with direct knowledge or involvement with your Dad or his account.

There may be a favorite teller he used;

the person who signed his “beneficiary card” when he first opened the account (whereon you are routinely asked to provide the “name of a beneficiary,” in the event of the account holder’s death. Get A copy of THE card.)

2. Elizabeth Meek (sp?) : “Admits in court the signature (on what?) is not hers.”

3. Identify both Trusts by title and the years they were dated and signed. Identify witnesses by name, address and phone, on each document.

This is the gravamen of your complaint, yet you contradict yourself in the video, stating that the first amendment to the trust is the legitimate one. Then you state the second, later amendment is the legitimate one.

ISSUE OF LAW: Does the later amendment to the Trust supersede the first amendment, and deprive the beneficiary of the earlier amendment of her rights, title and intersts mentioned in the Trust?

4. Identify beneficaries on each trust by name, address, and phone.

5. If possible, identify attorney (if any) who assisted with each trust.

6. Try to get copies of old checks signed by your Dad, which might demonstrate the extent to which each attorney was used by your Dad, and how much they were paid.

7. In the video, it sounds like you make mention of “Al Van Meekin’s Trust.” What is the correct spelling of this name?

8. You mention Palao as if it were a place, then you state it is your father’s name.

9. You say your Dad had two families. Identify all members by full name.

10. Obtain copies of marriage certificates for both.

11. Obtain copies of relevant death certificates. You should have requested the judge to order these for you, if they were not available when you went to court. You will have to show good cause why you should get these.

12. If Chris Molina is an attorney, obtain Bar#, name, address, office address and phone.

13. Obtain verbatim transcript of the court hearing wherein “Elizabeth Meekin admits the signature is not hers.”

14. Identify court, by full name, address, case number, date of hearing. Provide docket. (This is the chronological account by the court clerk’s office of all hearings and documents filed in the case.) Obtain list of exhibits.

15. Obtain copies of both Probate Codes for California and Hawaii, then read them. (They are the size of two 400 page books, and read like goobledeeguk, but if you can stay awake, by the last page, you will have become familiar with the terminology. Law is like learning a foreign language. Everyone learns to speak a language at some point in their life. The question is, are they motivated to learn the language, and spend years doing it.)

You will never be able to understand the Code by yourself, unless you are Einstein and Ralph Nader rolled into one, but you will be able to grasp many useful definitions and rules of Probate.

16. In fact, start with the Rules for Probate Court, found in the Hawaii and California Rules of Court. These paperback books are readily available from West Publishing, or Mathew-Bender, and they are worth an attorney’s weight in gold.

If you really did get screwed out of your inheritance, spending a hundred buck on four paperback books ought to be worth your while.

17. If there is a rat’s ass in Hell you can do anything about it now, you will practically have to do all the prelimiary case research yourself in order to get an attorney interested in litigating it.

Otherwise, you can litigate it yourself.

Unfortunately, I worked a year for a Probate attorney who was very old and nearing retirement. Consequently, he was very open about the things he used to do as a young probate attorney. My experience teaches me that Probate attorneys are the most able to defraud, (when they have a mind to,) simply by virtue of the scenarios which typically accompany probate matters:

In-fighting between family members causes severe breakdown in the lines of communication about what is going on with the estate;

Trustors are often so old they are unable to do their own accounting;

Selling off assets to the attorney’s friends at a price below market value, or purchasing the assets themselves (a conflict of interest.)

Assets turned over to unscrupulous or negligent attorneys for “safekeeping” are not routinely audited because the attorney is “trusted to do the right thing.” However, they are required to keep the client’s assets separate from their own personal accounts, and hold a portion of the money paid to them in something called an IOLTA account.

18. Google this term to double-check my statement.

19. Learn about IOLTA accounts and a lawyer’s “fiduciary duty” to his client. These are terms you should know, and they will help you identify violations of law by the attorney. This term “fiduciary duty” also applies to your sister, who wheeled your Dad to the bank, to execute paperwork, shortly before he went into the hospital.

The goal of ensuring that the trustee of the trust lives up to his “fiduciary duty” to see that the estate assets are properly preserved and distributed according to the will of the Trustor is the reason why the court requires a written accounting of all assets to be filed “of record” with the court, before the court signs the order designating the party or beneficiary as the “Personal Representative.”

This is just one form of probate, if that is the right term to use. There are many ways to “probate” an estate. There are different kinds of “trust instruments.”

20. Get a Nolo Press book on Probate and read it cover to cover. It is not the definitive work on Probate, but it is written by lawyers in layman’s terms. The local law library in SLO has a copy, or used to. It costs about forty bucks.

21. You mention potential witnesses who would be competent to give court testimony, such as your Dad’s friend and neighbor of several years. Get his statements about your dad in writing and make him swear that what he has written is indeed true to the best of his knowledge and belief.

Get him to sign and date it in front of a Notary and have it notarized (about ten dollars at the bank, if your bank still notarizes stuff for customers.)

22. Subpoena your Dad’s bank records, even if you have to file another suit in small claims to do it, from SLO. You have an interest and a right to audit the work of your Dad’s attorney.

I am not sure whether having your Dad die in Hawaii is the reason why the judge decided that probating his estate in California (when your Dad’s attorney is located in Paso Robles, and your Dad has property in California,) was a “forum inconveniens.” It seems like this issue is appealable for an “abuse of discretion,” on the part of the judge. See, for example, “Johnson v. Spider Staging Corp.” 87 Wash2d 577, 555 P2d 997, and 28 USCA 1404. The case has nothing to do with your case. It may be old law, and cannot be used as precendent in your case. All it can do is give you an example of some of the arguments a judge might consider when deciding WHERE an estate or trust should be “probated.”

Here are a couple of “causes of action,” which may or may not be applicable to your case. I hope you understand, I am writing this in the same spirit as any curious stranger would give advice to another stranger, if they happed to meet at the coffee shop and struck up a conversation. This is not an attorney talking to you, and I am not Samuel Leibowitz, or Louie Nizer. This is Rozalyn, the waitress, with some life experience under her belt. Okay? I am not any of the people mentioned in your video, whose names I cannot spell:

Jane Peebles, LA attorney

Judge Tatrin, Hawaii judge

Judge Hara, Hawaii judge

Judge Chen

Bishop estate

IRS Audit (GET)

Jim Alford, attorney

Lola Rigley

Senator Rigley

PEG Hotel Casino

Det. Flume (?), Atascadero PD

(get copy of his report and notes, if any)

Ron De Griswold, Capshaw law firm, Hawaii

Rhonda (full name and title)

Colleen (full name and title)

In order to combat that feeling of helplessness when you are victimized, you need to understand HOW MUCH information you already have, and how to use it. You may not even realize how much information you have.

You need to get affidavits from everyone, even the people who don’t like you. Ask if you can tape record them, so you don’t have to take notes and can listen to them without getting sidetracked by writing notes. Then, type up a transcript of what was said. Your attorney would have to do this, and charge you hundreds of dollars to do the same thing, I’ll bet.

If you can’t get affidavits, send them certified letters with specific questions and ask for a response, such as “Whose signature is that on that Trust document and what is it doing there?”

Unfortunately, anyone can be a witness to a will, depending on that particular state’s law. They don’t even have to be close friends at all.

In some states, relatives can be witnesses. In other states, they cannot. What is Hawaii’s law on this issue? Check their Probate Code to find out.

Your Dad’s lawyer might not have to have a notary present at the signing of the Trust document, if he himself is empowered by state law to attest to the matters that occured before him in his own law office. What is the law of Hawaii on this issue?

This is how a lot of fraud is accomplished, if you happen to get a crooked lawyer.

You talk about the FBI and the IRS. Did you file complaints with the state bar of Hawaii and California? Did you write to the Judicial Conduct Commissions for California and Hawaii? They have no power to change the judge’s decision, but they can give you specific information on what a judge’s duty is to the people who appear as parties before him. They have specific rules which identify the kinds of “gifts” which they can accept; the kinds of business transactions which violate their duty as judge’s and the kinds of economic interests they must disclose on the IRS Form 700, which is a public document, in the custody and control of either the County Recorder or the Clerk of the Court’s Office.

To start to litigate this, –if this is what you want to do,– your most basic work, as suggested here, will take about a year.

If you work four hours a day for a year, you will have accomplished every step in this list of suggestions.

Again, it may get you nothing. Or it may get you some piece of mind. At it’s best, the work you do may be sufficient to convince a lawyer to take your case. It may convince a lawyer, that you have a case, and that there is enough money to pay him for his work. Otherwise, forget the lawyer. If he thinks he will not get paid, he will not take your case. You will need to bring the action “in propria persona” (by yourself,) or you will need to let it go.

If your inheritance has been ripped off (it sounds like it has,) the best you can do for yourself is learn from it. Empower yourself to the point where you can regain your peace of mind. There are a lot of people in your family, and the situation will eventually come up again, the next time someone passes away. Good luck.

Causes of Action (a partial list)

Breach of Fiduciary Duty

Duress

Lack of Jurisdiction, or insufficient jurisdiction of the Hawaii courts (issue on appeal)

Lack of “fair notice” of the probate action giving your Dad’s estate to his other family, which must also have found that the Trust amendment designating you the beneficiary of the trust is no longer valid.

If someone is claiming they didn’t give you notice because you are “not competent” to handle legal matters on your own, by all means, turn that excuse around and use it to argue that you were not given “fair notice” and sufficient time to hire a lawyer who could represent you. Argue that you relied on the judge to honor his ethical duty to see that you got adequate notice and representation. You have a constitutional right to be heard and represented by a lawyer, even in civil cases, where a “substantial right” or property is at stake, under the Sixth Amendment.

This is a longshot, but maybe a lawyer who is a specialist in Americans with Disabilities Act can point you to a section of that law which might discuss your entitlement to a lawyer to protect your property when you are “disabled.” This law is a few hundred of pages long…..

Finally, you should be putting the bulk of your energy into doing the things you already know how to do, like interviewing witnesses and typing up their statements. The law is so vast and requires so much technical knowledge that it can overwhelm and intimidate you into doing nothing. Don’t worry about that, at first. Worry about preserving facts and people’s memory of your Dad and what transpired before his death.

Then read the law, a little at a time. The more you read it, the more you will become familiar with the terms and definitions in the Probate Code. At the end of a year, you will be amazed at how much you have learned, even without becoming a lawyer. What should go without saying, of course, is that you will definitely need a lawyer to represent you on these issues, if you actually want a money return on the investment of your time, blood, sweat and tears. The law is a club, in which only lawyers can truly participate, even when you are right.