Washington Times:  “The American bankruptcy system exists for the “honest but unfortunate” debtor, not for those who would use bankruptcy strategically to rewrite obligations just to get a better deal than they could outside bankruptcy. . . . The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is primed to rule any day on one of the biggest potential loopholes – the ongoing Bleak House-style efforts of the late Anna Nicole Smith to obtain the fortune of deceased Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall.”

See Law Professor Todd Zywicki's take on the Anna Nicole Smith appeal in his post today on The Volokh Conspiracy in which he says, “The op ed is based on my article with Marcus Cole on “Anna Nicole Smith Goes Shopping: The New Forum Shopping Problem in Bankruptcy.”

Los Angeles Times:  “The McCourts, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers (so she says; he says he's the owner and she's not), jointly pocketed income totaling $108 million from 2004 through 2009, according to documents Jamie McCourt recently filed in the couple's divorce case in Los Angeles County Superior Court.  On that sum, they paid zero federal and state income tax.”

The Probate Lawyer Blog by Andrew Mayoras:  “Dennis Hopper was already fighting against advanced prostrate cancer.  Now the 73-year-old actor is turning up the heat in his battle against his wife, 41-year-old Victoria.   He filed for divorce in January, and according to published reports, the key factor is his will.  Victoria is a 25% beneficiary under Hopper's will. But, in the case of divorce, the couple's prenuptial agreement says that she gets nothing.”

Wall St. Journal:  “Seven months before Melvin Simon died, the ailing shopping-mall magnate altered his $1 billion will during a three-hour meeting in Asherwood, his palatial home near Indianapolis. A financial adviser had to hold and guide his hand as he signed the revised document, according to court filings.  Now that scene has become the center of a bitter estate struggle pitting Mr. Simon's second wife, Bren Simon, whose inheritance was greatly increased by the new will, against his children from his first marriage.”

This reminds me of a case years ago involving a client of mine who was the sole heir of an Arizona woman who died.  She had a multi-million dollar estate that was left to a woman who was essentially a stranger.  The elderly woman had a stoke on Friday night while hospitalized.  The next morning the medical staff examined her and wrote in her chart that she was comatose, deaf and blind.  Shortly thereafter the prospective heir to the estate arrived in the hospital with a lawyer, notary public and a trust officer from the Valley National Bank.  VNB was the trustee of the woman's trust.  The group left the woman's hospital room with amendments to the woman's will and trust that left everything to the stranger and cut out the blood heir completely.

As you might guess, the blood heir sued the stranger.  In his deposition, the VNB trust officer testified that somebody in the room (I cannot remember who) put a pen in the woman's hand and moved her hand to make […]

New York Times:  “FOR all of the on-screen drama that led ‘Crazy Heart; to three Academy Award nominations this week, an equally poignant tale is unfolding behind the scenes of the film in a battle over the estate of the songwriter Stephen Bruton, who co-produced the ‘Crazy Heart' soundtrack and tutored Jeff Bridges on guitar for his Oscar-nominated role as an aging country singer seeking love and redemption.   The estate battle involves Mr. Bruton’s wife of 13 years, Mary Keating Bruton, a photographer and former model, and T Bone Burnett, the award-winning music producer . . . . “

Wall St. Journal:  “HONG KONG—Police on Wednesday arrested Tony Chan, the feng-shui adviser who lost his claim on the multibillion-dollar estate of heiress Nina Wang, in relation to possible forgery.  Mr. Chan, a former lover of Ms. Wang, produced a will purporting to hand over her real-estate fortune to himself. A Hong Kong judge ruled Tuesday that the will was likely a forgery.  A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong police confirmed the arrest and said Mr. Chan hadn't been charged with any crimes.”

Indy Star:  “In filing, daughter asks that bank take control of billionaire's assets.  A Hamilton County judge has been asked to oust Bren Simon as sole trustee of her late husband's $1 billion-plus estate.  Deborah Simon filed the request Monday to put a bank in charge of overseeing the trust controlling Melvin Simon's massive holdings.  Deborah Simon's seven-page petition says keeping Bren Simon as trustee “would be detrimental to all beneficiaries” of the estate because of the ‘distrust and animosity' between them.”

This story in the Arizona Republic is about three recently filed lawsuits in which the plaintiffs allege that lawyers and fiduciaries who had a duty to protect their elderly clients instead are alleged to have done the opposite.

“The old lady who lost all her money while being ‘protected' by Maricopa County's probate court is now pleading her case to another court — and she isn't the only one.  ‘Obviously, it (the probate system) isn't doing what it's intended to do, it isn't protecting vulnerable adults,' said attorney Grant Goodman, who filed the lawsuits after reading about 88-year-old Marie Long, who went from having $1.3 million to nothing in four years.  ‘It's actually allowing these predators to strip these estates bare under the cloth of a judicial rubber stamp.' . . .

“According to probate court records, Church's law firms have collected $343,000 from Marie's trust since 2005, when the widow suffered a stroke and came under the protection of the court. Sun Valley, meanwhile, has collected $413,000 in guardian and companion care fees while seven other attorneys have scooped up another $86,000. As a result of all this “protection”, Marie is now in the poorhouse and will need taxpayer support.”

BBC News:  “A court in Hong Kong has thrown out a feng shui master's claim to the multi-billion dollar estate of Asia's richest woman, Nina Wang.  Tony Chan, who said he was Nina Wang's lover, had argued she left him her fortune in a 2006 will.  But a high court judge said the will was a fake and a 2002 will was valid which left the estate to a charitable trust run by Wang's family.  Nina Wang's Chinachem was worth $4.2bn (£2.1bn) when she died in 2007.”

The Independent:  “As he fights prostate cancer, a vicious battle is already being waged for the millions the actor earned from films such as Easy Rider. Then again, says Guy Adams, this is a hellraiser who was never likely to go quietly. . . . Hopper is once more involved in a dramatic Hollywood ending. Unfortunately, this one involves the messy final chapter of his tumultuous life.  The 73-year-old method actor, who is fighting prostate cancer that is widely reported to be terminal, has been caught up in an ugly legal battle with his fifth wife Victoria Duffy, to whom he's been happily married for 14 years.”

KTRK TV 13:   “A real-life family feud is playing itself out in Houston's courts. There are accusations of missing cash and gold, and at the center of it all is one sister accused of stealing from her mother, who has dementia.  When Louise Staunton, 94, and her husband were making their fortune in Michigan and raising a big family, they probably never thought it would end up in a fight among their daughters.  “This is the last thing she needs in the twilight of her years,' said attorney James Plummer.  One of whom is now in jail.”

For more see a followup story by KTRK TV 13 called “Where'd the gold go?“

IndyStar.com:  “Bren Simon [wife of deceased billionair Melvin Simon] has filed a counterclaim against the company her late husband co-founded, charging Simon Property Group with breach of agreement for refusing to give her stock or cash for her partnership holdings.  She also contends that her stepson, the Indianapolis-based company's chairman and CEO, David Simon, is behind the denial.  The counterclaim ratchets up the stakes in a growing legal battle over the $1 billion-plus estate of Melvin Simon, who died in September at 82.”

The Probate Lawyer Blog: “William Davidson and Melvin Simon had a lot in common.  Both were billionaires and both were Jewish.   Simon built his fortune through the country's biggest shopping mall company, Simon Property Group, and Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.3 billion.  Davidson led Guardian Industries Corp., one of the world's largest glass suppliers, and had a fortune recently tabbed at $4.5 billion.  They also each owned NBA franchises in the midwest.  Davidson owned the Detroit Pistons (yeah!), while Simon co-owned the rival Indiana Pacers (boo!) with his brother, Herbert Simon.  Both men died last year, with Davidson passing away at age 86 in March and Simon passing in October, at age 82.  And both were survived by spouses as well as children from prior marriages.  And, in both instances, the spouse and the children from the prior marriage did not see eye to eye.  Because of that, both the Davidson Estate and Simon Estate are mired in lawsuits about the true wishes of the beloved billionaires.”

Arizona Republic:  “An 88-year-old lady left destitute, a big chunk of her life savings sucked dry by people who were supposed to protect her, may yet get some of her money back.  Brian Theut, the guardian ad litem appointed to look out for Marie Long, has asked a judge to order Phoenix attorney Brenda Church to return half of the $110,000 that her law firms collected from Marie's trust between 2005 and 2008. Church was the attorney for Marie's niece, Genevieve Olen, who oversaw Marie's money until late last year, when there wasn't anything left to oversee.  Meanwhile, Church has filed paperwork seeking court approval of another $233,000, money she (or rather her law firm, Frazer, Ryan, Goldberg & Arnold) collected from Marie's dwindling account in 2009.”

See “Court Blasts K&L Gates Team's Huge Fee and ‘Unnecessary Lawyering‘” where 18 attorneys and paralegals ran up a bill of $800,000 representing an estate valued at $1.2 million.  The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said:

In the present case, a total of eighteen attorneys and paralegals were representing Folan, a remarkable number especially when one takes into account the motion judge's view that the theories advanced by the contestants were not “overly complex.” Even a cursory review of the billing records suggests that among all these attorneys there was duplication of effort, and a fair amount of billing for the time of two or more attorneys who were attending the same hearing. … Moreover, at least some of the pretrial litigation activity, especially a number of Folan's […]

IndyStar:  “Now the company that shopping-mall tycoon Melvin Simon built is becoming legally entangled in the family feud over the late billionaire's will.  Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, the world's largest publicly traded retail estate company, filed a complaint Monday in Hamilton Superior Court against Simon's widow, Bren Simon.  She is seeking to convert about 6.5 million shares of ‘partnership share units' in the family trust into common stock or cash.  The amount of stock or cash was not specified.  The company, in its complaint, said the shares cannot be converted because they are tied up in a legal challenge to Melvin Simon's will by Deborah Simon, a daughter from a previous marriage.”

The Probate Lawyer Blog:  “It's been seven months since the King of Pop died suddenly at the age of 50, and fights surrounding his estate seem like they may last for many years to come.   Creditors are coming out of the woodwork, with new ones surfacing on a weekly basis.  The latest, a management company, joins a series of business, medical and spiritual advisers and others who insist they are owed money, totaling more than $20 million, already. That total will certainly climb.  The estate co-executors, John Branca and John McClain, have to sort through the requests for money and try to determine the legitimate ones from the ones that are, well, more fiction than fact. It's common when someone wealthy and eccentric passes to have all sorts of people saying they are entitled to money.”

Rocnow:  “The daughter and a grand-nephew of real estate magnate Max Farash improperly diverted more than $12 million from the company he built and trusts in his name and that of his late wife, two lawsuits filed in state Supreme Court this week charge.  The allegations against Lynn Farash and Matthew Aroesty were laid out in complaints brought Tuesday by the Farash Corp. and the guardian of Max Farash in one case, and Canandaigua National Bank, the trustee of Marian Farash’s trust, in the other.   The lawsuits are the latest outgrowth of a legal battle over the guardianship and wills of Max and Marian Farash since both were declared mentally incapacitated in April 2007.  Max, 96, currently resides in a Webster nursing home.  Marian died in July 2007.  Lynn Farash, 62, is the couple’s only child.”

The Washington Post has a story about a New York charity suing the estate of Bill Davidson, the former owner of the NBA's Detroit Pistons basketball team.  The Areivim Philanthropic Group claims the estate owes $4.8 million of a $5 million gift Mr. Davidson promised when he help found the charity.

Orange County Register:  “Late Newport Beach resident Joey Bishop's live-in companion, who was with him for his final eight years, won a round in her lawsuit against the comedian's former lawyers after a judge ruled that one of the attorneys cannot countersue her on allegations of financial elder abuse.  Reversing the tentative decision he issued Jan. 12 in favor of attorney Ed Gregory Hookstratten's motion, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ralph W. Dau ruled instead in favor of Nora Garibotti, the plaintiff in the case who argued that any countersuit should have been filed earlier.”