Probate and Estate Dispute Videos

Hello, my name is Justin Patten. I'm a solicitor and principal at Human Law. When you have a problem on a deceased person's estate, it's difficult, it's emotional and it can sometimes appear that a solution is not in sight. What we try and do is provide a straightforward approach to resolving the situation. What is exactly the problem which is causing the estate not to move? What is required to resolve it? What steps can we take to sort this matter out as quickly and as effectively as possible? If you think that we can help, by all means contact me. You can do so by email or during office hours you can call me and I'll try and come back to you as quickly as possible. Hope to hear from you soon.

With respect to AI, there's some good and bad things about AI. In terms of the good, from a solicitor's point of view, it enables you to go through documents rapidly. In seconds, you can have analysis done of documents, and that saves the solicitor time, and it should enable the client to get a more cost-effective service. But where AI has weaknesses is that it is fallible. It does not necessarily go through every document that you instructed to do so, and it is prone for making errors. And this is why, with AI, fundamentally you need someone to oversee that, you need a solicitor who considers the AI, and then ultimately makes the judgment. So what we do is we do use AI within our practice. It's only something that we check thoroughly, so the AI doesn't control us, but we're certainly using it.

In terms of our firm's pricing, we're very distinctive in that what we offer is fixed fee pricing and that everything that you incur as a fee, you have to agree before we actually do the work.

We take a collaborative approach with our clients in that we don't want to give you surprises.

What we do is we tell you what the fee will be and then provided that's satisfactory from your point of view, then we go ahead with the ongoing work.

The three most common mistakes of an executor, number one, is when the executor acts in his own interest to the detriment of the beneficiaries. That is the biggest error or mistake that an executor can make. The second mistake that an executor can make is when they fail to have an overview about what is happening on the estate. They fail to understand what is important, what is not important. That leads to them not dealing with what really gets the estate moving. They don't focus on what is important. The third mistake that an executor makes is getting sucked into the day-to-day grittiness or the emotions of the other party. The best way for an executor to secure long-term outcomes is by being neutral, detached and giving minimal reason for the other side to criticise the executor.

One of the key ways to help ensure that you secure successful outcomes in inheritance disputes is managing the tone of the way that you or your lawyer interacts with the other side. Tone is important for executors particularly because often what happens they're put under significant pressure by beneficiaries or their representatives and one of the temptations is to get involved in an arguing match with the other side. Conversely beneficiaries they have temptation as well to be aggressive or over assertive in the way that they interact with the other side. Tone is important because if the matter ever does go to court and a judge looks at your case, the judge will scrutinize very heavily the approach that you and your solicitor have taken to sorting out the matter.

Inventory and account is an appealing application for a beneficiary because it is targeted, it is largely predictable and it is controllable.

What that means is you make the application and normally you should succeed in getting the application because your entitlement is defined by law.

Another appealing aspect of inventory and account is that it tends to be dealt with on paper.

From my experience it would be very rare for an application for inventory and account to actually go to a formal court hearing.

Furthermore, another appeal about inventory and account is that there is the possibility to get your costs of making the application back from the other side, namely the executor or certainly to get some form of court order entitling you to those costs.

There are two things to pay attention to of caveats. And they focus on the content of the issues you're dealing with and also the timing of how you deal with the caveat. Biggest danger that you can have is that you can immediately issue a warning at the first sight of a caveat or you issue a warning too soon. The point about this is that there is a time to issue your warning. The key thing that you need to do is to have a handle on your case. And you need to understand what the issues are. Generally what I try and do when I deal with a caveat is to work out what is required to actually get rid of this caveat. Another aspect about caveats, which is misunderstood, is that once an appearance is made, it doesn't mean that it's permanent. What it means is that in order to get rid of that caveat, it has to either have a registry order or it will ultimately have to go to the high court therefore, with dealing with the caveat, provided that you understand the issues, provided you understand what is required to get rid of the caveat and that you've dealt with those issues before issuing your warning.

One of the most important aspects about caveats is timing. From the executor’s point of view what I like to do is to ensure that I have all my evidence lined up prior to issuing a warning. In other words I want to make it seem to the court that we've taken all reasonable steps to try and settle this case. Then when the time is right you can issue your warning.

Being an executor is a responsibility, but when disagreements arise, it can quickly become stressful, expensive and deeply personal. I'm Justin Patten, solicitor and mediator of more than 20 years’ experience, and I'm author of the book The Out-of-Court Executor. It's a practical handbook for executors facing family disputes, stalled estates and difficult decisions. At its heart is my Six Pillars framework, a structured approach to understanding the dispute and deciding what to do next. Some cases need court intervention, but there's often useful work you can do before that point. If you're an executor facing conflict, delay or uncertainty, you don't have to navigate it alone or wait until the dispute is in a courtroom. The book gives you practical guidance and structured approach you need to take control, protect yourself and move the estate towards resolution.