Alabama Fiduciaries Part II: Ethical Considerations - On-Demand
Webinar is now available on-demand. NOTE: On-Demand webinars are not eligible for CLE credit.
Presented on: Wednesday, August 30, 2017
WEBINAR SNAPSHOT: Changes in relationships can create ethical problems for the attorney. For example, the attorney may represent a couple who divorces. What is the attorney’s obligation to each client?
Many ethical issues arise when an attorney represents a fiduciary. The attorney must be able to recognize these ethical pitfalls, avoid them when possible, and deal with them when necessary.
The attorney must recognize who the client is. The attorney’s client is the fiduciary, and the attorney is ethically bound to the fiduciary. The attorney does not represent the estate or the beneficiaries of the estate.
Changes in relationships can create ethical problems for the attorney. For example, the attorney may represent a couple who divorces. What is the attorney’s obligation to each client?
Many and varied ethical issues are encountered by elder law attorneys. For example, an attorney may have represented an elderly person in the past and is now representing the attorney-in-fact or conservator of that person.
In Alabama Fiduciaries Part II: Ethical Considerations When Representing Fiduciaries, the presenter looks at various ethical problems that arise when an attorney is representing a fiduciary – the personal representative, the trustee, the attorney-in-fact, the guardian, etc.
Agenda
- Who is your client?
- To whom do you have a duty?
- Problems of changes in fiduciaries: New executor, administrator, trustee
- Former client
- Divorced and divorcing clients
- Minor children, incompetents
- Gray areas of capacity and competency
About Your Presenter
James B. Griffin
Founder
James B. Griffin, LLC
James B. Griffin founded James B. Griffin, LLC in Mountain Brook and serves clients in Alabama and Georgia who are pursuing the American dream of property ownership, business ownership, and investing in their future. The firm’s mission is the protection of private property rights, especially in real estate, the creation of wealth, and the preservation of assets through estate planning, especially for those heirs who are not capable of taking care of themselves. He is a Birmingham native who graduated from Gordon College in Massachusetts with a B.A. in Economics and History, from the University of Alabama with a M.A. in History, and from Vanderbilt University Law School. He began his practice at a large firm in Atlanta and then in a small firm for most of a decade in his wife's hometown of Covington, Georgia, before returning home to Alabama. His practice today concentrates on estate planning, trusts, estate administration, property, and real estate.
