My father in law recently passed in Clark County, NV. He had a Living Trust that was originally created properly. After his death, the successor trustee produced the trust to the beneficiaries, grudgingly, and the beneficiaries noted that major changes had been made to the trust in the successor trustee's own hand writing. The changes were not signed, initialed or otherwise witnessed by the original trustee or any other person. The successor trustee states that such witnessing was not legally necessary because he, the successor trustee, had power of attorney for the trustee.

Because the hand written changes transfer a significant amount of the estate assets directly to the successor trustee, the beneficiaries wish to confirm the legality of the changes.

All of the beneficiaries live out of state. How should they proceed?

Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html and http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/index.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.

No, the successor trustee probably is not allowed to alter the trust. Technically, it depends on the trust document, but that would be very very odd for a trust to allow that. If the trustee is uncooperative, consider finding an attorney to write a demand letter to the trustee. Demand letters from a law office often scare people into doing the right thing. If that doesn't work, you my need to hire a lawyer to sue to get the trustee removed from office.

Generally I don't offer my personal services in these types of forums, but this is an area of law in which my firm excels. If you can't work it out yourselves, feel free to contact me, Jared Richards -(702) 436-4333, www.bdtlawyers.com. Around 30% to 40% of my career has been in litigation involving trusts. Others in my firm also have significant trust litigation experience. Other qualified attorneys in town include Mark Solomon and Layne Rushforth (both at different firms). Naturally there are others as well. Make sure you find a firm that focuses a significant portion of its practice on trust litigation.

Good luck.

Jared Richards.

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LVHBA (Las Vegas and Henderson Bankruptcy Lawyer)