Inheritance Fraud

Unfortunately, I have first hand knowledge of how sometimes, honesty, integrity and common sense has gone out the window with some in the legal profession.

Case in Point:

Eleven years ago, my step mother-in-law, along with help from her lawyer son and her personal attorney in a small town in Arkansas, succeeded in bilking my husband and his two sisters out of a million dollar inheritance, as well as the family home, from their 88 year old father, a well respected former surgeon in Memphis.

That was my first (and I hope, my last) encounter with the legal profession. After a year of our spending thousands of dollars on attorney fees just to recover family memorabalia that was still in my father-in-law's Memphis home, we were advised, because the legal system was so corrupt, at the time, in Arkansas (where my father-in-law had been moved to,the last couple of years of his life) we might as well just forget about it and move on with our lives.

Filing a civil suit would have been too costly for all of us and we had children in college at the time to support.

I never thought I'd personally encounter such greed or persons without a moral compass, in my lifetime. The worst thing was that my poor father-in-law, an extremely honorable man who dearly loved his children and grandchildren, was horribly deceived and an unwitting partner to what went on, beginning with being talked into marrying the woman only 2 weeks after they met!

Amazingly, his new wife, and her partners in crime, were perceived as fine upstanding community members and devout Christians! In this case, common sense was usurped, as my father-in-law had a will, but because of a simple x on a Charles Schwab account that put all of his holdings (millions in stocks) in joint tenancy with her, three years before his death, his will was essentially null and void and everything done was deemed "legal". BTW, he had been declared legally blind and deaf at the time and was extremely ill. None of his children found out about this change until after his death, and by then it was too late to do anything about it.

Sadly, I've learned that the word "moral" does not exist in some lawyers' vocabulary. It is all about winning now, not doing what is right and good. While it is certainly not my intention to paint all attorneys with the same broad brush, as I am personal friends with some who are wonderful people, unfortunately there are enough bad apples to sully what used to be a noble profession.

I wanted to share this story as a warning to others with elderly parents, especially if those parents are wealthy and live out of state. Unfortunately, these types of predators abound, just waiting to pounce on unsuspecting victims. Sadly, sometimes they come as "wolves in sheeps' clothing".

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