We pay special attention to the parties' relevant mental, intellectual, administrative, behavioral and physical dynamics and relevant personal finances (including lifestyles and personal tax affairs).
Of course we fully assimilate relevant local law, practice, procedure and culture.
We particularly focus on:-
the micro- and macro-behavior of lawyers (including the victim's), law firms, doctors, financial planners, asset managers, clerks, bookkeepers, accountants, auditors, family members, regulators, judges, expectant heirs, will-appointed executors and court-appointed administrators, estate front-office opponents and others of interest
conspiracy, attempt, and accessorising before, during and after the fact
organised crime, including gangs of lawyers, gangs of heirs, and hybrid gangs
criminality in relation to high-value, intricate, vulnerable estates
criminality directed against minority-interest and special-interest heirs
criminal non-disclosure and concealment
criminal misrepresentation and pretenses
criminal abuse of position
theft and receiving, handling, transacting
obtaining money, property, instruments, official appointments by deception
criminal undue influence
criminal accounting and accounts
data criminality
relationships and transactions criminality
criminal impersonation
forgery, falsification, fabrication, fictionalisation
money laundering
obstructing justice
perjury and other court crime
corruption
tax crime
dishonest interest-duty conflicts
criminality by lawyers using professional tools such as bogus bills, bogus professional relationships, bogus professional transactions, bogus information, etc.
the civil-law counterparts of particular crimes, if you choose the civil route.
Favoring particularity, we eschew the vague, ambiguous, amorphous term 'fraud'.
We will tell you what criminality has been committed — when, where, and by whom — and how it has been committed.
MHNA believes that there is no data-supported case in which any type of inheritance-related dysfunction, dishonesty and criminality, including full-scale organised inheritance crime by estate managers, lawyers, heirs and others, will escape our notice or defy our fiduciary forensic, scientific and other methods.
We use specialist proprietary tools, techniques, methods and processes, and advanced databases and analytics:-
to parse and astorise, including spectroscopically…
every {present} and {absent} datum: every relevant word, phrase, movement, act, default, action, inaction and (gross and net) cent (costs, prices, values etc.)…
by all persons of interest individually, in combination and collectively…
discretely by issue and holistically…
in full multi-dimensional context.
We work overtly or covertly as instructed, and always with appropriate delicacy, diplomacy, tact and discretion. We can work conspicuously in a particular case so as to robustly convey our approach, and our projected general direction of events, to estate fiduciaries and relevant others.
We never work in, with or as part of any 'team'.
We use social media only forensically.
We are available to:-
work as appropriate with other specialists and partner-level lawyers
scrutinise and evaluate documents, correspondence, interactions, relationships, transactions
supervise and verify inventories, books of account, accounting processes, financial statements, accounts, official filings, tax filings, valuations of actual and contingent assets and liabilities
draft technical reports, correspondence, comments, criticisms, complaints, instructions to lawyers and technical experts, friend-of-court briefs, pleadings, indictments, witness statements, affidavits, court applications, job descriptions
locate, identify, authenticate, compile and present exhibits
prepare and present detailed data-rich technical reports and formal complaints
make technical presentations to (among others) lawyers, police, prosecutors, judges and juries.
Every MHNA customer has his own user-friendly MHNA secure online control room, log, ledger and archive from which he can easily monitor our gross- and net-valued activities and progress in real time and download our periodic customer-specific reports and accounts.
Our communications, and data uploading services, are encrypted and multiply secure.
Our work is comprehensively confidential indefinitely.
For the victim heir:-
watching and waiting in the background
setting up and maintaining logs, ledgers, shadow accounts, archives
modeling and simulating the trend and direction of events
inspecting, examining, analysing, evaluating everything as it comes in
conferring with you, alerting you, finding experts, investigating, reporting
full assistance mode.
For the victim heir's civil lawyer:-
deep-detail explanation of the heir's situation and potential / actual problems, with appropriate written and video presentations, ensuring that you really do 'get' what is going on. No more pretending, fobbing off, finger-tapping etc.
setting up a real-time dashboard, control panel, log, archive etc. so the heir can follow and understand in real time, per issue and holistically, the whole-story whole truth, with nothing relevant left out, of exactly what you're doing for him, how quickly, how efficiently, how effectively, how cost-effectively, why, and with what result (forget secret billing targets, not-verifiable timesheets, delegation to unsuitable juniors and cosy conversations with opponents)
modeling, simulating, drafting, discussing collegially
assisting you with very complex law and facts (everyone needs it). No need to bluff, blunder, bluster and bullshit (English lawyers rightly call it 'acting'), including in high-value, intricate, vulnerable-estate cases that demand lawyering of real talent and skill.
Victim heirs' own dysfunctional lawyers can fulsomely compound the underlying problem, and can bring to the mix additional, separate, multiple problems of their own. MHNA has witnessed and experienced, in various jurisdictions, much (and, curiously, much of the same sort of) idiopathic and conspiratorial dysfunction, incompetence, dishonesty and criminality by self-professed specialist 'estates' lawyers. With certain exceptional exceptions, we don't trust any civil lawyer to handle any inheritance case correctly, honestly or loyally, and nor should any heir — suspicion and distrust that this peculiar community of lawyers has brought upon itself.
For the hesitant, over-cautious, apprehensive, incompetent, dishonest neophyte estate manager about to be out of her depth in a high-value intricate estate she should have never solicited or accepted:-
conveying to you the estate's salient facts, issues and business (if we're not brought in too late for these to be useful), and ensuring that you include in all relevant processes, and do not disdain or discard (including inadvertently or corruptly), the deceased's relevant, uniquely informed available inner circle
helping ensure you know what you're doing and what you're talking about before you start digging the usual hole for yourself
advising you on correct procedures in case you don't already know them, and steering you away from incorrect ones (there are many: that's how estate managers pad their bills)
helping to ensure you stay free of all relevant duty-interest conflicts
constant monitoring and checking of everything relevant that you do — all issues, all locations (we have a duty to do it anyway, so we might as well do it together) — before it's too late.
For the inexpert inexperienced criminal lawyer falsely professing expertise and experience in inheritance crime:-
assisting you to recognise what you're looking at — including very sophisticated, well disguised, well concealed inheritance-related international multi-jurisdiction criminality — and how to deal with it
informing you about basic and advanced inheritance dynamics and dysfunction, especially in relation to high-value, intricate, vulnerable estates and the criminal estate manager's tricks of the trade (if she's a lawyer, it might involve and implicate her entire firm: you need to be able to deal with that)
guiding you in the correct direction re specific crimes, including conspiracy, attempt and accessorising
assistance in drafting charges, indictments, other court documents
pre-trial and trial assistance.
For trepidatious police and prosecutors:-
services per the <inexperienced criminal lawyer> above
properly dealing with a credible distress signal (including a detailed report plus accounts prepared by MHNA) from a victimised heir (forget forever "It's a civil matter")
if you already have the necessary familiarity with inheritance-related criminality, collegial assistance if you want it
general and specific training.
MHNA unconventionally uses 'estate manager' as a generic term for the will's executor (before and or after death and before and or after probate), the estate's ad col grantee, the estate's interim administrator (before probate), the estate's administrator (on and after probate), and similar inheritance officials. None of these other terms by itself, however juridical and quasi-precise, properly conveys, and each of them materially misrepresents and obfuscates, the true nature and scope of the official's functions. Our term consolidates the profusion of terms and summarily eludicates the office.
We also use as appropriate:-
the generic terms 'estate fiduciary' and 'inheritance fiduciary'. (We note formal American usage — usually infelicitous, often misleading — of 'fiduciary' in other contexts)
the unfamiliar, neglected, misused term 'fiduciant' to generically describe a recipient of fiduciary duties, such as an heir and a trust beneficiary. (In the trusts context, we reject the multiply misconceived, juridically misguided, illiterate, wholly inappropriate American use of 'fiduciant' — and even worse, 'grantor' — to refer to a settlor.)
We eschew gibberish, such as the use of 'probate' to refer to anything other than the process of proving a will. We particularly repudiate the American slop 'file probate', the peculiar 'admitted to probate', and the American "heirs' property" to refer to a particular class of realty.
We avoid:-
the vague, ambiguous, amorphous term 'fraud' — both civil and criminal. (We similarly dislike the pretentious American 'inheritance theft' to refer to an offense that says nothing about inheritance, and the highly infelicitous American 'inheritance hijacking' to refer to behavior that has nothing to do with hijacking as commonly understood)
jargon and illiterate legalese. For example, we dislike the word 'civil' for its ambiguity — eg 'civil law' vs. criminal law in a civil-law jurisdiction — but presently have no solution; cf. 'criminal' as an adjective and a noun, as in 'civil lawyer criminal', 'criminal lawyer criminal', 'criminal lawyer' and 'lawyer criminal'. While on relevant generalities, we note, deprecatingly, the absence of a term for an attorney under a power of attorney, so we have devised one: 'power-attorney'. We similarly deplore American juridical and judicial illiteracy in omitting the definite article ('Defendant…', 'Plaintiff…' etc.) Maybe there's something in it. We suspect there is only grandiose illiteracy in it (like some American judicial and lawyerly use — richly deserving of all the ridicule it attracts — of the word 'dicta')
Latin ('executrix', 'administratrix', and similar absurdities. We do use 'ad col' and other appropriate terms where unavoidable. 'Pro bono', 'pro se', 'amicus' etc. are wholly avoidable).
For internal and some other purposes (including this website), MHNA prefers the straightforward 'customer' to 'client'. (Of course we do use 'client' if conventionally necessary.)
And we consider it unprofessional — because in practice, next to impossible — to deal with any relevant estate management datum or situation without correctly placing it into one or more of these (usually interacting) four locations (and that's how we do it; we don't know anyone else who uses this elementary essential tool, which explains why purported particularisation is usually all over the place):-
'inner office'
The estate manager's own office, firm etc; colleagues; internal set-up, relations, situations, relationships, transactions; inherent duty-interest conflicts; internal interaction with outside professionals including outside lawyers, accountants, auditors.
'back office'
The estate manager's interface with the heirs individually, in combination and collectively; communications with them including interim and final reports, financial statements, copies of relevant primary source material; functional and dysfunctional interaction on specific estate business; distributions etc.
'front office'
The estate manager's interaction with the outside world, conduct of the deceased's unfinished front-office business and other front-office business; pursuit other than by recourse of front-office opponents; the estate manager's other relevant dealings with the outside world.
'recourse'
The estate manager's and relevant others' interaction with civil (chancery, probatem surrogate, defamation etc.) courts, tribunals, mediation, arbitration, conciliation etc. on inheritance-related business.