NC Fiduciary Litigation Commentary
A construction crew renovating a defunct brewery in Dendermonde, Belgium, drilled into what they assumed was a stash of one-euro coins. It wasn’t. Workers found 49 gold bars and more than 4,000 coins sealed inside a brick cellar, a cache worth an estimated $10 million with no paperwork and no obvious owner. Police secured the…
A jury summons in North Carolina starts with a name pulled from two lists: registered voters and licensed drivers. Each county’s Jury Commission draws from that combined pool at random, and the clerk mails a summons with instructions on when and where to report. Anyone at least 18, a resident of the county, and able…
Famous actor Chadwick Boseman died in August 2020. On July 17, his brothers, Derrick and Kevin, filed a petition in a Los Angeles court asking the judge to remove Boseman’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, as administrator of his estate. The reason, according to the filing: nearly six years after his death, and almost four years…
Every few months, a client calls convinced that a parent’s estate plan was obviously the product of manipulation. The plan changed late in life. It favored a caregiver, a new spouse, or one child over the others, and the family takes that unfairness as proof enough. It isn’t. North Carolina courts don’t ask whether a…
A competitor undercuts you using pricing information your former sales manager wasn’t supposed to have. A vendor doubles as your customer’s new supplier behind your back. A departing executive walks out with your client list and starts calling your accounts before his non-compete is even a week old. Business owners ask the same question in…
Business relationships fall apart. When they do, the first question we ask isn’t “what happened?” It’s “what kind of entity are you dealing with?” People use “shareholder dispute” and “partnership dispute” interchangeably. They shouldn’t. The entity structure determines the legal framework — which means it determines your rights, your remedies, and your realistic path forward.…
Inheriting a parent’s home is one of the most common expectations in estate planning — and one of the most misunderstood. Many people assume that being named in a will means they will receive full ownership of the property. But some estate plans transfer only a life estate, which is a far more limited interest…
Most of the world runs its legal systems on civil codes — comprehensive, systematically organized statutes that set out the law from first principles. France has its civil code. Germany has its Burgerliches Gesetzbuch. Spain, Italy, Japan, and most of Latin America follow variations of the same model. The United States does not. With the…
When Patrick Steele died in 2022, he left behind a revocable trust directing that up to $5 million be distributed to “my nieces and nephews.” Simple enough — until nobody could agree on who that actually meant. His widow, acting as trustee, argued the phrase covered both his biological family and her family, twenty-nine people…
Real estate deals move fast — and sometimes, the paperwork doesn’t keep up with the handshakes. In Charlotte’s booming commercial real estate market, it’s not uncommon for developers and dealmakers to operate on trust, verbal commitments, and a shared vision before any formal documents are signed. But when the relationship sours and someone claims they…