Estate / Probate / Family Law

Litigation Engagements

• On behalf of plaintiff – a divorcing wife – I performed a forensic investigation of the community property assets and liabilities listed on the inventories produced by her surgeon husband and helped her assess his offers of settlement of their marital estate – in state court in Texas.

• On behalf of plaintiff — Vicki Lynn Marshall (a/k/a Anna Nicole Smith) — the now-deceased former Playboy Playmate of the Year, who sued her stepson, Pierce Marshall, alleging he defrauded her out of her inheritance from her wealthy oilman husband, J. Howard Marshall II, through a complex estate planning scheme – in probate court in Texas.

• On behalf of plaintiffs – the adult children of an automobile dealer – who sued their father for looting their deceased mother’s estate to support the lifestyle he began to enjoy with his new wife, a neighbor with whom he had an affair while still married to their mother, who committed suicide upon discovering it, and for breach of fiduciary duty regarding his actions as an officer and director of the family business during this time — in probate court in Texas.

• On behalf of defendants – two lawyers and their law firm – I performed a 12-year reconstruction of the books and records of the estate of a murdered real estate syndicator after two of his daughters sued their father’s executor and the executor’s lawyers alleging that the executor misappropriated the estate’s assets – in probate court in Texas.

• On behalf of defendant – a divorcing husband – I performed a community vs. separate property tracing of transactions in mutual fund and brokerage accounts holding marketable securities for a period of eight years to determine ownership of the assets remaining as of the date of divorce — in state court in Texas.

• On behalf of plaintiff – a divorcing wife – I investigated her allegations that her husband comingled the assets of community property businesses they owned with the assets of separate property businesses owned by him to hide them from her and prevent her from taking some of them as the result of the dissolution of their marriage — in state court in Texas.

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