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Marc M. Stern Featured in MarketWatch's The Moneyist

October 24, 2024Media Mention
MarketWatch

Marc M. Stern, a partner in Private Client Services, was quoted in MarketWatch in response to the following situation: Parents paid the $50,000 down payment for a home when they purchased it 30 years ago. Later, they transferred title to their oldest son. Although the son talked about adding his brothers on title, he never did. After the son’s recent death, the live-in girlfriend, who did not attend the funeral, announced that they had been married before he died and that she had been added on title to the home. ‘What can his surviving family do to protect their interest?’

Excerpts:

Marc M. Stern, partner in the private client services group at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles, says any other claims on Mr. X’s property will require appropriate documentation. “If the home belonged to Mr. X’s parents and they wanted to attach ‘strings’ to ensure that the home stayed in the family, they should have had a contract stating those requirements before transferring the home to Mr. X,” he says. “Absent such an agreement, 30 years is a long time.” In other words, the fact that Mr. X’s brothers don’t like or trust Mr. X’s girlfriend is not relevant.

“People process grief in different ways, and the girlfriend/wife’s decision not to share pictures or attend the funeral are not, by themselves, indicative of bad faith,” Stern adds. “For example, I recently had a case where the decedent died more than a year ago. Some of the decedent’s assets will be sold by the recipient of those assets, yet the recipient expressed that they still felt connected to the decedent through those assets and wanted to wait another month to come to grips emotionally with selling those assets.”

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