By Douglas Levy
Douglas G. Chalgian said that in his nearly two decades of practicing probate litigation and elder law, he had never encountered an instance in which a trustee asserted his Fifth Amendment rights during a misappropriation lawsuit.
That all changed last year.
Within a six-month period, trustees in two cases Chalgian was handling took the Fifth.
This month, in Bay County Probate Court, Chalgian got summary disposition in one of those cases, where the trustee, a financial planner, was accused of converting more than $513,000 from two sisters’ trust.
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