Hello

MHNA is a pioneer and key player in the never-ending fight against inheritance crime.

The field is undeveloped and fraught with misunderstanding and dysfunction among both the public and professionals. 

MHNA means to change that. (We also do a good job in forensically supervising, scrutinising and demystifying the work of estate managers, lawyers and their associates.)

Though relatively youthful, MHNA is already dealing with cases of inheritance crime of at least $30m (jurisdictions include England, Switzerland, New York, Lichtenstein, Cayman Islands, France, Cyprus), a figure bound to increase in the nature of the disease and its increasing ravages: billions of dollars of stolen, sabotaged, wasted and lost estate assets worldwide every day. 

We anticipate a steady and ever-growing demand for our forensic and other services, including from:-

• victim heirs who want to see inheritance crime prosecuted, not litigated, and who understand the difference

• estate managers (our generic term for executors, interim administrators, full administrators, ad col grantees, etc.) on the lookout for relevant criminality among heirs, professional advisers, business associates etc.

• civil lawyers who need forensic help on dishonesty and intent in relevant tightly focused, tightly controlled, genuinely well-conducted inheritance-related litigation

• criminal lawyers who need comprehensive forensic elucidation of inheritance-specific crime scenes

• police who just don't get it ("It's a civil matter")

• prosecutors who require a ready-to-eat digestible inheritance crime case on a plate

• accountants and auditors wary of colluding in inheritance crime through deficient, defective, deceptive financial statements

• others involved personally, professionally or commercially in any relevant inheritance-related situation.

MHNA inheritance crime scene services include:- 

• protection and prevention

• investigation

• examination

• analysis

• reporting

• prosecution and litigation support

• pursuit

• asset tracing and recovery.

Our mission is to assist in identifying, exposing, pursuing and prosecuting inheritance criminals. 

The MHNA approach

MHNA sees all relevant inheritance-related dysfunction as actually or potentially criminal. 

MHNA's particular line is the criminalising of inheritance crime. MHNA identifies, investigates, examines, analyses, assesses, evaluates, gross- and net-values, elucidates, exposes and pursues inheritance crime using the criminal justice system. We apply ordinary criminal law, in all its relative elegance and simplicity, to inheritance crime. We call it out as crime. 

MHNA also assists on the civil side. We deal with actionable dishonesty such as fraudulent breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent breach of trust, deceit, conversion etc. But we don't want to see victim heirs wasting their lives courting a Jarndyce-style chance'ry division of their inheritance in relation to inheritance crime that can and should be prosecuted.

We deplore law enforcement's standard "It's a civil matter" brush-off.

A victim heir might find himself up against these and other factors actively opposed to him getting justice, recompense and restitution in the criminal law system or anywhere else.

Unravelling a mess

Now for a discussion about inheritance crime, because that's our real interest. We have no idea why treating inheritance crime as criminal should be difficult. We can explain why it is difficult. The situation takes a bit of unravelling. (We venture to suggest that the whole subject is a bit of a mess; and this doesn't take into account the unknowns of the criminal trial even when you've mastered both the subject and the case.)

Most fundamentally, MHNA's resolve to thrust inheritance crime into the criminal justice system comes up against active and interactive resistance from the very communities — four of them — we are trying to help:-

• civil lawyers

• criminal lawyers

• victim heirs

• law enforcement.

Each community behaves dysfunctionally. 

In soliciting victim heir customers, civil lawyers selling civil law services commit a multitude of false representations concerning themselves, their practices, civil and criminal law and practice, etc. 

In rebuffing complainant victims, law enforcement commit a multitude of false representations concerning themselves. their expertise, the scope of their jobs, civil and criminal law etc. in order to evade practising criminal law. 

The victim heir is in the middle. Confusing, ain't it?

Those four communities

More precisely (we largely have in mind the American situation but the dysfunction is largely ubiquitous), with no apologies for repetition (this is an important subject culpably misstated and badly misunderstood; setting it out at length on this website and in our forthcoming book on inheritance crime is appropriate):-

Civil lawyers:-

• generally favor civil law and practice

• especially like probate court 'probate litigation' (which often has nothing to do with probate), and chance'ry litigation: it pays better than prosecuting (if we're in a jurisdiction in which the civil lawyer or his firm can do that directly or indirectly)

• give victim heirs the false impression that torts are the same as crimes

• don't give the uninformed victim heir holistic information or advice about the most elementary fundamentals of the civil and criminal justice systems (they are separate, must be considered separately, are never synonymous and almost never overlap), or any directly or indirectly relevant criminal-law contacts

• have little or no expertise or experience in criminal law practice and for all their advertised implicit prowess specifically in invented crime and invented hybrid crime and invented actionable hybrid crime are not inclined to diversify into it, including the invented hybrid crimes featured in their own advertising

• invent crimes. The insinuation in your advertising is that 'inheritance theft' is a crime. By what law, exactly? Ditto 'inheritance hijacking'. What is 'inheritance hijacking' exactly, and what law criminalises it?

• invent hybrid crimes. A civil lawyer advertising his prowess in handling by civil means the (invented) criminal offense of 'inheritance theft' is insinuating that that specific offense not only exists (unless it exists, it doesn't exist) but can and positively should be dealt with —  even though a (hybrid) crime, perhaps dealt with only — civilly (not unless the offense exists and the criminalising law says that it's not criminal). Except in the case of a statutorily expressly hybrid offense that does exist, whoever heard of suing anyone for theft?

• represent that it is appropriate to not prosecute a non-existent offense that is also a non-existent hybrid offense but to sue on it

• represent to the multiple victim —  of inheritance crime and now the civil lawyer's misconduct, with more to come —that they will sue on a non-existent offense that is also a non-existent hybrid offense. How exactly do you propose doing that? 

• misrepresent their practice and intentions. You know, but your mark does not know, that your practice does not extend to either prosecuting or litigating any crime, real or invented, hybrid or not. Maybe you'll eventually confess that what you're doing or proposing to do has absolutely nothing to do with any crime, criminality or criminal law process — that you propose to deal with this invented crime and its invented hybridness not by prosecuting or litigating it but by suing on it not as a crime but as a tort, and only by using as yet undisclosed not-criminal not-hybrid civil law (conversion, deceit, trespass to goods, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of trust, civil fraud etc.). Your mark is going to find himself litigating a tort when he thought from your false advertising that you were going to prosecute a crime. You'll try to get out of your own mess by telling him, "It's called something else technically, and it has nothing to do with any crime, and it's all civil, and the policeman was absolutely right about it all being a civil matter, but for us it's really inheritance theft, I assure you, and we're going to sue for inheritance theft." Or you might choose to never disclose to him the exact not-criminal not-hybrid cause(s) of action. Maybe you'll let him go on thinking that you are indeed suing on a fabricated-hybrid fabricated crime called 'inheritance theft'. Which is it so far? (Five or six deceptions so far on the victim heir by his own lawyer, in addition to the inheritance crime, with lots more to come because everyone is now in a hole.)

Prosecution-side criminal lawyers:-

• don't know enough about relevant inheritance-related factual events, incidents, episodes and sagas to be credible or effective in cases of intricate multi-jurisdictional multi-succession multi-million-dollar inheritance crime, especially when being committed in plain view right under your nose but undetectable unless you know exactly what you're looking at (especially true of inheritance crime by estate managers and their lawyers, and by the victim heir's own lawyers). Inheritance is not an ingredient in a particular crime unless the criminalising statute explicitly says otherwise. But inheritance facts are very relevant to how, when, where, by whom and against whom a relevant crime is committed. You risk missing them every time

• will tend to miss inheritance criminality's relevant civil law: we are not saying that civil law is irrelevant. Criminally obtaining, retaining, invoking and purporting to exercise a court appointment as estate manager, for example

• knowing that they are not fully equipped intellectually, will take the case or decline it. How does this dysfunction assist the victim heir?

• Practice note: it's probably easier and quicker to coach a generalist criminal lawyer about inheritance specifics than to train a chance'ry lawyer about crime.

Victim heirs:-

• don't understand the most elementary differences between the civil and criminal justice systems, between prosecuting and suing, between crimes and civil misconduct, or between genuine specialists and jackass opportunists

• labour under the false impression that litigating civil misconduct is the same as or equivalent to prosecuting criminal conduct

• are systematically misinformed about both the civil and the criminal systems by both civil lawyers and law enforcement, each dragooning the victim away from the criminal system by claiming, each for their own improper reasons, that patently obvious genuine real inheritance crime (averred one way or another by the civil lawyer in his advertising, disavowed by law enforcement when deigning to talk to the victim complaint) is not criminal, or cannot or should not be prosecuted

• think mistakenly that there are crimes called 'inheritance theft' and 'inheritance hijacking' which must be dealt with in the civil system by civil lawyers pretending to handle crime

• are particularly confounded by civil lawyers' unexplained, deliberate, incongruous, irrelevant marketing averments of multiply irrelevant imaginary hybrid and not-hybrid criminality

• are particularly dismayed and disoriented by law enforcement's unexplained, deliberate, incongruous, irrelevant averments of concocted multiply irrelevant hybrid or not-hybrid actionability

• don't bother to inform themselves of their concurrent, consecutive and alternative civil and criminal process options  

• are not intellectually capable of constructing or presenting an irresistible irrefutable brief for law enforcement

• are comprehensively uninformed, misinformed, bewildered, cowed and dumbfounded to the point of being intellectually unfit to manage their own affairs

• are likely to end up in civil court — highly gratifyingly to both opportunist civil lawyers and dysopportunist law enforcement, neither of whom wants the criminal case

• are in for what they deserve: a big bill from the civil lawyer

• maybe do understand that by going to a civil lawyer, especially in a jurisdiction where private prosecutions are not known and where law enforcement has already given him the heave-ho, he's in for litigation, not prosecution. Maybe it really is clear to you that 'inheritance theft' is the civil lawyer's improper, inappropriate, unprofessional, misleading, deliberately confusing euphemism for a bunch of torts and that you'll never see the right side of the inside of a criminal court, and that all of that is just, gee, swell. MHNA begs to suggest that such moral and intellectual dysfunction is not the correct way to go about it.

Police and public prosecutors (private prosecutors are motivated entirely differently) have their own explaining to do:-

• there's no culture of treating or even recognising intricate inheritance crime as either crime or criminal. You're supposed to treat this particular species of crime as criminal, go after it and prosecute the criminals, especially lawyers

• there's no specialty of doing any of that. You're supposed to meet the relevant standard of specialist professional competence specifically in the field of inheritance crime

• you have a thing (to repeat yet again) about making trenchant dishonest grandiose irrelevant pronouncements of irrelevant expertise (which you have invented) in irrelevant law that doesn't exist and irrelevant civil process that doesn't exist:-

  • "It's a civil matter" — concerning the same misconduct that the civil lawyer avers, with intent to mislead and confuse, is criminal 'inheritance theft', possibly hybrid — is not only irrelevant, inaccurate, disingenuous, discourteous and always dishonest (however much it gets you off the hook and assists civil lawyers). It annoys us and distresses the victim heir

  • You declare and or opine — dishonestly averring relevant pertinent civil law expertise and its relevance, and dishonestly disavowing criminal law functions, duties and responsibilities — that patently obvious genuine real criminality is not crime at all (cf. the civil lawyer's invention of crime that really isn't crime) and can only be dealt with civilly, or that it is a peculiar type of hybrid crime that can, should and must be dealt with only civilly. All this is monstrous

  • We'd be pleased if you would do your job, without pretense, invention or evasion, in a way that squares with your sworn public duty. MHNA can do a lot at every stage to help you (and you won't lose face). No more "It's a civil matter" when presented with genuine inheritance crime. (If you really don't get that the same facts can give rise to criminal as well as civil liability; that torts and crimes are different; that civil and criminal process in relation to the same facts can be pursued concurrently and or consecutively, and the essentials of the most complex and intractable inheritance crime scene especially involving lawyer criminals, you really shouldn't be in this business.)

More basics

Generally speaking:-

• a crime is never actionable (we make no apologies for a purist approach to law and terminology)

• an inheritance (or any other) crime as such is never 'a civil matter' (that accursed phrase beloved of so-called law enforcement), or also 'a civil matter', unless the relevant crime statute expressly says so. Out of hundreds of relevant crime statutes globally that we've reviewed, we've only ever seen two crimes — in US states — statutorily justiciable in both criminal and civil court (and neither concerns inheritance)

• there's almost no specific criminal law about it. There doesn't need to be: ordinary plain-vanilla criminal law already covers it

• inheritance crime is ordinary plain-vanilla crime committed in the context of inheritance

• there's no such crime as 'inheritance theft' or 'inheritance hijacking'. We take no issue with the concept of theft of an inheritance or even with the phrase 'theft of an inheritance' if 'theft' be correctly used. We have seen some inexcusable homespun definitions of an already invented 'inheritance theft' citing behavior that has nothing to do with theft or any other crime. We do object to the insinuation that there is a statutory offense specifically called 'inheritance theft' if there isn't one, and to outrageous definitions. We consider inexcusable gibberish the phrase 'inheritance hijacking', especially as used by lawyers with intent to mislead, deceive, confuse, induce, etc.

• there's no specialty among civil or criminal lawyers or law enforcement of inheritance crime. There does need to be. It's probably easier to train criminal lawyers in the finer points of inheritance crime than to train civil lawyers in the entirety of relevant criminal law. Criminal lawyers do need to be intimately acquainted with all relevant (and some irrelevant) procedural, substantive, financial, legal, technical and practical aspects of the crime scene in full context: what are the jurisdictional issues; who are the principal and accessory perpetrators and how do they work individually, in combination and collectively (including what they are supposed to be doing and not doing in civil law, if that's relevant to criminality, which it usually won't be); exactly what ordinary plain-vanilla and other criminality do they commit (including its concealment) and how, when, where and in relation to what do they do it; who are the victims; what assets, liabilities, business, situations, issues, activities, relationships and transactions in which locations (inner office, back office, front office, recourse, etc.) are the subject and object of what criminality; what points and issues, especially those raised in purported self-exculpation by the perpetrators, are relevant and irrelevant; where the perpetrators are lawyers, judges and relevant officials, what are the peculiar ways and circumstances in which they conceive, carry out, accomplish and attempt to consummate their criminality

• there's nothing inherently difficult about committing, identifying, investigating, examining, evaluating, valuing, expounding, elucidating, exposing or pursuing inheritance crime.