Winning a judgment against a dishonest executor is only half the battle. The other half is collecting it — and executors who loot estates have an unfortunate habit of being broke by the time anyone catches them. This is where the executor’s bond, an obscure document most beneficiaries never think about, can become the most…
Every Kentucky estate is supposed to end. Debts paid, taxes filed, assets distributed, a final settlement approved by the court, executor discharged, file closed. But some estates simply… don’t. The executor stops filing, stops distributing, stops responding, and the estate drifts along, technically open, with beneficiaries’ money in limbo. Kentucky law provides mechanisms to force…
Trusts concentrate enormous practical power in one person. A trustee holds legal title, writes the checks, picks the investments, and often controls what beneficiaries are told. The counterweight to all that power is the duty of loyalty — the strictest duty Kentucky law imposes on anyone. When a trustee starts treating trust assets as a…
For most Kentucky families, the single largest estate asset is real estate — the house, the farm, the rental property. Which means the single most damaging thing a careless or crooked executor can do is sell that property badly: below market, without exposure, on hurried terms, or to a buyer with connections to the executor….
In most Kentucky family estates, the executor is not a neutral professional — it’s the oldest child, the surviving spouse, or the sibling who lived closest to Mom. That person is usually also a beneficiary. Kentucky law permits this, and most of the time it works fine. But an executor-beneficiary wears two hats that pull…
The core promise a fiduciary makes is simple: this job is for their benefit, not mine. Self-dealing — an executor using the position to capture value from the estate for himself — is the most direct betrayal of that promise, and Kentucky courts treat it accordingly. If you are a beneficiary who has discovered that…
“It’s been two years and the estate still isn’t settled.” I hear some version of that sentence weekly. Sometimes the delay is legitimate — estates with real property to sell, tax issues, or litigation can take time. But sometimes the estate is simple, the assets are liquid, and the only thing standing between the beneficiaries…
Of all the ways an executor can mishandle a Kentucky estate, mixing estate money with personal money is the one that turns defensible sloppiness into legal jeopardy fastest. Commingling is not a technicality. It is the failure that makes every other failure possible — and for beneficiaries trying to figure out where an estate’s money…
Executors are very often family members — and family members have favorites, grudges, and history. Kentucky law nonetheless demands something difficult of them: when they put on the fiduciary hat, they must treat the beneficiaries impartially. An executor who runs the estate for the benefit of one beneficiary at the expense of another is breaching…
One of the most common questions I hear from trust beneficiaries is some version of: “The trustee won’t show me the trust document — can they do that?” The short answer, under Kentucky law, is generally no. The Kentucky Uniform Trust Code, codified at KRS Chapter 386B, gives qualified beneficiaries meaningful rights to information about…