Too often, the trust is broken. But these successes come not because the system demands it, but because individual executors, lawyers and court officials choose to do the right thing. That system works fine when estate administrators are honest, efficient and open about their work. But in other cases, the system's loose oversight opens the door to wrongdoing. Trusted executors loot estates, while court officials look the other way.
Wrongdoers receive light punishments, while victims get an empty promise of repayment.
And as the probate horror stories mount, elderly Floridians take refuge in living-trust plans that leave them even more vulnerable to exploitation. The probate system is not intrinsically evil. Run properly, it is a fine way for people to pass wealth from one generation to the next. But the system is no better than the law that governs it, or the people who run it. Today, in the first of a series of editorials on Florida's estate system, the Times explores how probate court fails the people it is designed to protect.