Homeowners' Associations ("HOAs") serve an important purpose in many California communities. Essentially, an HOA serves as a kind of municipal authority over many aspects of home ownership in the community in which it is established. HOAs derive their existence and...
Firm News
Common Violations of Homeowners’ Rights by California Homeowners Associations
It is proverbial in California that Homeowners Associations ("HOAs") have come to play an important part in home ownership. Whether you want to paint your house, remodel it, re-landscape your yard, and most other common scenarios of home ownership, chances are that...
California Trust Litigation — Avoiding Trust Litigation and the Problem of Poorly Drafted Trusts
Not infrequently, California trust litigation is caused by a poorly or carelessly drafted trust. Litigation can be costly, and trust litigation is a very good example whereby an ounce of prevention can be more valuable than the proverbial pound of cure. Our Firm...
When to Settle a Case — A Matter of Arithmetic and Other Things
Buffington Law Firm’s litigation attorneys often use mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution as an alternative to taking a case to trial. Statistically, in California it is said by some authorities that up to 97% of all civil lawsuits settle out of...
California Trust Litigation – When the Surviving Spouse Can Amend the Entire Trust
This is the second in a series of Blog posts in which Buffington Law Firm's trust litigation attorneys discuss certain estate planning scenarios that seem to frequently lead to trust disputes and trust litigation. This Blog post will discuss the situation in which,...
California Trust Litigation — “Brady Bunch” Trusts and Why to Avoid Doing One
This is the first article in a series called "Avoiding Trust Litigation." Buffington Law Firm's trust litigation attorneys have litigated hundreds of trust litigation scenarios. There are certain estate planning practices that seem very prone to resulting in unhappy...
Trust Litigation: Proving Incapacity
When trust litigation attorneys examine the factual and legal basis for whether grounds exist to contest a California Living Trust, usually the threshold issue concerns the mental status of the trustmaker ("trustor") when he or she created the instrument to be...
Trust Litigation: Who Owns the Bank Account After the Parent Dies?
An increasingly common issue that Buffington Law Firm's trust litigation attorneys are having to deal with concerns the ownership of parents' bank accounts after the parents have passed away. The best practice is for bank accounts to be titled in the name of their...
Court Intervention to Supervise Administration of Trusts
As discussed in our Blog article last week, although California Living Trusts are intended to avoid Court involvement, once a trust petition activates such involvement, courts have broad equitable powers to issue orders to carry out the court's supervision of the...
No-Contest Clauses in California Trust Litigation
No Contest Clauses are one of the most misunderstood aspects of California living trust litigation. Buffington Law Firm's trust litigation attorneys often deal with situations that involve a "No Contest Clause" and whether or not a given No Contest Clause is...