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One reason the fees mount so quickly is the number of parties billing.
• The court may appoint two attorneys for the incapacitated person, the ward. One represents the ward's desires, the other the ward's best interests. The two may conflict.
• The ward's trust, which holds assets, also may have an attorney who bills the assets.
• The private fiduciary and its attorney bill the assets.
• One or more of the ward's relatives may have attorneys who may bill the assets.
A probate lawyer charges $175 to $400 an hour. Many private fiduciaries in Arizona charge $100 or more an hour. Attorneys and fiduciaries often discount their fees and perform some tasks for free.
Phoenix attorney Candess Hunter, who represents fiduciaries, says fees have become a huge profit center for some in the probate system: "It all has to do with a few people who have discovered how to create a billing machine to gather significant wealth."
Attorneys and fiduciaries charge for seemingly every task their offices perform - opening mail, writing checks, answering the phone. A judge often reviews the bills only once a year and rarely makes big reductions.
Relatives grow especially angry when a fiduciary delays or denies paying for a ward's needs while still billing for its own fees.
Family members of Dave Coppes, 85, of Carefree, who died last year, say a fiduciary, the Sun Valley Group, paid itself $27,000 in December 2008 about the same time it told them that Coppes could not afford hearing aids.
Full Article and Source:
Maricopa County Probate Court - Fees Mount Quickly
2 comments:
Wow - Maricopa County Probate Court is all over the news!
Good article!
Agree. Very informative article and I'm glad to see things heating up in Arizona!
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