Are you currently in a heated dispute with relatives about how to distribute your parent’s estate? Are you upset with an unfair valuation of an asset? Experienced Palm Beach probate litigators know that although it may be simple to value a stock price or a bank account other assets are not so easy. How can you get the court to revisit a valuation? Check out what one former spouse did in a West Palm Beach dissolution case to get the money she felt entitled to.
West Palm Beach Valuation of Assets
- Even assets that are readily appraised can be hard to value.
- How much is a home worth?
- Probably a lot more to someone if it was their childhood home.
- When it comes time to read the will often family’s are surprised to find out the instructions of distribution are anything but clear.
- Your mother and brother each get 33% and so do you with the remainder going to charity, ok but what constitutes an even third?
- Who gets first choice of what assets?
- More importantly who is the ultimate authority on the value of these assets?
- A West Palm Beach probate judge may be the guiding light deciding who gets what and more importantly how much something is worth.
- But how can you appeal the matter it is really not a question of law but one of valuation.
- Is that what an appeals court deals with? Not usually.
- You may have grounds to appeal if you can show that the court did not have competent substantial evidence to value an asset.
- This may be easier to show than you think, check out this case out of West Palm Beach.
Tucker v. Tucker: A Question of Valuation
- This was an appeal from an equitable distribution proceeding in West Palm Beach, in other words a property distribution following a divorce.
- There were some penny stock that had to be valued so that it could be distributed and apparently there existed a genuine dispute as one party valued it at 4 cents and the other at one cent.
- Rather than investigating and finding a just valuation it appeared from the record that the Court simply “split the baby” and valued the stock at 2.5 cents.
- Does that sound right to you?
- It did not sit well with the appellate court in West Palm Beach and they remanded for a more appropriate valuation.
- Do you agree?
- Either way if the Palm Beach probate court is making quick and reckless valuations of your assets you may have grounds on appeal, there is case law to support the fact that such decisions may be improper.
- In order to protect your rights you will also have to protect your assets, are you ready to fight for them?
Want to learn more?
Check out the entire case by clicking here.