Legal Malpractice – Unaccounted Trust Funds Leads to Disbarring of Probate Attorney

Trusts can mean big money sometimes millions or more being looked   over by another, your trustee. But what happens when the money from your Palm Beach Trust fund go missing, and your lawyer was serving as trustee – does his actions as trustee amount to malpractice in his role as your attorney? A Port Washington, New York lawyer was suspended for over a year and was finally disbarred after over a million dollars went missing from a client’s trust. 

• Palm Beach Probate Attorneys will set up trusts for you to protect your inheritance from going through probate and will protect those funds for the benfit of your heirs, orbeneficiaries. 
• After a trust has been established you will have to choose a trustee someone to look after the trust and its assets and ensure that it is cared for in compliance with the trust documents.
• In Florida a trust need not be filed with any official court to be effective either.
• But what happens when a trustee fails to act prudently or even in good faith, can you sue them personally? Check out an action for breach of fiduciary duty. But what about legal malpractice if they are an attorney? Can you collect off of your Delray Beach malpractice claim?

Attorney disbarred over one million dollar goes missing from a clients trust.

• An attorney was suspended by the Grievance Committee for the Tenth Judicial Circuit, their job is to oversee the discipline of New York Attorneys. The Florida equivalent would be the Florida Bar. 
• The committee alleged (and it was upheld by the Appellate Division) this attorney breached his fiduciary duty as an escrow agent to his client who died in 2005, when he failed to comply with a Nassau County Court Order to file asan attorney in fact, he also misappropriated various funds.
• The final accounting by the court said that 1.1 million dollars are missing and that they should be paid back to the trust by the attorney.

Palm Beach Probate Attorneys know what they owe to clients when serving as trustee and they are experienced in getting at the root of malpractice performed by other attorneys that breach the trust of the public.