By Peter Dolan, Chair of ELM’s Trust and Estate Litigation Practice — How Washington Courts Resolve Ambiguous Wills, Trust Interpretation Disputes, and Beneficiary Questions Sometimes there is nothing wrong with a Will or trust itself. Nobody claims it was forged. Nobody claims the person who signed it lacked capacity. And nobody is asking a court […]
By Peter Dolan, Chair of ELM’s Trust and Estate Litigation Practice For years, your loved one said how the estate would be divided. Then, after death, a new Will suddenly appears. One person receives nearly everything. A spouse is disinherited. Longstanding beneficiaries are removed. And the person who benefits from the change may have helped […]
By Peter Dolan, Chair of ELM’s Trust and Estate Litigation Practice Rights and Remedies for Disinherited Spouses Under Washington Law You were married for years. Maybe decades. You built a life together. You planned for retirement together. You assumed that after one spouse passed away, the other would be financially secure. Then your spouse dies […]
By Peter Dolan, Chair of ELM’s Trust and Estate Litigation Practice Warning Signs of Fiduciary Misconduct Under Washington Law Your parent dies. Your sibling is named trustee or personal representative. At first, everything seems normal. Then questions start going unanswered. Financial information becomes difficult to obtain. The estate remains open month after month. Legal fees […]
Facing a Washington Committed Intimate Relationship Claim? How We Can Help Written by Peter Dolan, Chair of ELM’s Trust and Estate Litigation Practice A loved one dies. Their family expects the estate to pass according to the Will or the laws of inheritance. Then an unmarried romantic partner appears and claims a right to a […]
A Plain-English Overview for Property Owners, Buyers, and Litigants A lis pendens (Latin for “suit pending”) is a legal notice that can be recorded against real property to warn the public that the property is involved in a lawsuit. The purpose of a lis pendens is to put potential parties on notice that real property […]
Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act Beginning January 1, 2024, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) requires many companies operating in the United States to report information to the federal government about individuals who create, own, or control the companies. Anyone who willfully fails to comply with the reporting requirements can be liable […]
On Monday, August 9, 2021, Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued a proclamation requiring certain state workers and health care workers to be vaccinated. This blog post is intended to provide an overview of what the Governor’s Proclamation says and how it affects certain state workers and certain public and private health care providers. It does […]
Lawsuits have sprung up nationwide against state and local authorities who have imposed shutdown orders in an effort to thwart the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in Washington, two lawsuits challenging our state’s shutdown order have been filed. The first, by gubernatorial candidate Joshua Freed, was voluntarily dismissed after Mr. Freed was reassured that his backyard Bible […]
The SBA has released its loan forgiveness application: The application contains an “alternate payroll period” and instructions for calculation FTEs for forgiveness purposes. More guidance will be forthcoming.
