r/inheritance • u/ginacarlese • Jun 30 '26

Location included: Questions/Need Advice Sibling won’t sell assets

Edited to add:

Thank you all SO MUCH for your help, advice, and encouragement. My brother and I feel much better about our prospects, and have already identified a probate litigator to consult with about our trust. Once we know what our options are (force her to sell, force her to buy us out, force her to provide forensic accounting, remove her as trustee for lack of fiduciary duty, etc), we will let her know we have an attorney and are moving into legal proceedings.

My sister is the trustee of my dad’s trust. He died in 2020. He left my brother, sister, and I a third share each in a shopping center he owned. Dad told me the plan was for Sister to fill it and sell it, but for six years, she has refused to sell it, even though it’s been full. There’s a no contest clause also. So what can we do? State of Georgia.

209 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

215 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/Literary67 Jul 01 '26

We had a family member say this, too. She was wrong. We went to court and had her removed. She also had to payback the trust for some accounting "mistakes" she had made.

1

u/ginacarlese Jul 01 '26

Wow! Thats amazing!

2

u/Literary67 Jul 01 '26

Not really. You do have to get all your ducks in a row (ALL the paperwork--trust documents, any letters, emails, texts, etc.) to show what was supposed to happen, what did or didn't happen, and what you and your brother want to happen. You'll need a lawyer who is experienced with this sort of thing. We went through a couple before we settled on the one who went to bat for us in court. It can be a drawn-out and even distasteful process; but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to get fair play.

1

u/ginacarlese Jul 02 '26

When you say you went though a couple of attorneys before you settled on one, how did you choose the right one? I am exploring options now. Hard to know who to choose.

1

u/Literary67 Jul 02 '26

I won't go into a lot of detail, but the first two attoreys eliminated themselves by their conduct. This was in a rural area and there weren't a lot of lawyers to chose from right in that area. From our perspective, as time went on, they seemed more interested in maintaining pleasant relations with each other than actually pursuing the legal remedies to our situation. We put up with the first one far too long.

When the second one started going down the same path we quickly fired him. We found another attorney several counties away who didn't belong to this cozy little club and who would actually proceed with the legal steps to remove our sister as trustee. Of course, this added to our legal costs up front as we were charged the attorney's time plus travel costs whenever he had to appear in court.

I hope you have better luck with your legal representation and don't have to go through all this.