The perfect crime
Inheritance crime is close to the perfect crime because:-
the subject, for all its antediluvian antiquity and ubiquity, is in its fundamentals still badly misunderstood, badly explained and badly mishandled
perpetrators, especially lawyers (as such and as estate managers) and other stiff-collar criminals, know how to comprehensively exploit the phony complexity of an inheritance situation (there's no such thing as a complex inheritance situation) and its open invitations to easily committed multi-dimensional multiple comprehensive chronic criminality perpetrated in plain view
neglectful, emotional, distressed, confused, uninformed, incoherent, despondent, grandiose victims let it happen and then do nothing about it
specialist chance'ry lawyers, knowing nothing relevant about criminal law or practice, dragoon their now multiply victimised victims in the direction of expensive, speculative, potentially dangerous chance'ry litigation, which is usually multiply comprehensively inappropriate. No criminal process. It might as well not exist as crime
police and prosecutors (by which we almost always mean public prosecutors):-
fail from ignorance and laziness to understand the simple, ordinary dynamics and context of inheritance crime — it's all simple ordinary plain-vanilla crime, comprehensively covered by simple ordinary criminal law, committed in the context of inheritance
are easily confused and intimidated by the inheritance context, which they clearly know little or nothing about. We suspect that criminal investigations of inheritance crime, when they do happen, are cumbersome, ungainly, inelegant and protracted because law enforcement does not know enough about inheritance or inheritance crime, simple or intricate, to do any better. Any other reason?
do not lack for pretentiousness, presumption and bad faith. Knowing nothing relevant about civil law or practice, knowing less about inheritance law and practice and knowing nothing about the case (except that they don't want it), "It's a civil matter" is an all-too-familiar inappropriate, unfounded, meaningless, irrelevant, reprehensible edict, even if they genuinely apprehend an actual or potential (and always irrelevant) civil law connection. Law enforcement are rightly despised for this scam. Crime, including hybrid crime, is always crime. We are generally not interested in anything any police or prosecutor has to say at any time for any reason about any civil law or practice, whatever their actual or fancied pre-eminence as civil lawyers, however expert in imaginary hybrid offenses, and however clairvoyant about a case they know nothing about. Crime and criminal law must be the starting points.
Two preliminary rules
Two simple rules before we start. Generally speaking:-
1: If you're an heir the victim of relevant clear criminality (whatever else it might be), and a civil lawyer hooks you with 'inheritance theft', 'inheritance hijacking' and similar insinuations of crime, that civil lawyer is representing that:-
he is a criminal lawyer
those specific offenses exist (misleading shorthand is not allowed in this business)
he is a specialist in investigating and prosecuting them
he is definitely not proposing that you pay him to litigate those offenses unless they are statutorily explicitly hybrid (can be prosecuted and or litigated) and the particular proposed litigation of those offenses is comprehensively preferable to prosecution.
So you now have a clear criminal case of one or more specific identified evaluated valued offenses and a civil lawyer who claims to also be a highly able experienced criminal lawyer able and willing to prosecute them. In that case — and that situation can only follow the most detailed specialist scrutiny, analysis, modeling, etc. — expect and demand prosecution, not litigation, or you're at risk of getting into a civil mess and missing the criminal case entirely with resulting waste of time, money, energy and opportunity.
The civil lawyer practising civil law (and imaginary hybrid criminal law) pretending to be a criminal lawyer practising criminal law is likely going to draw you into multiply confusing 'probate' litigation that has nothing to do with prosecution:-
conversion, deceit, trespass to goods, breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty, civil fraud etc. are not offenses
litigating any of them — which does not impress us in principle if there's a clear criminal case — is never prosecution of theft or anything else, including any fantasy or real offense of 'inheritance theft' or any other theft, even if the relevant statute explicitly says that any relevant theft can be litigated as well as prosecuted and under exactly what circumstances, including the genuinely fully informed victim's freedom to choose prosecution and or litigation, and even if the civil lawyer claims — always falsely — that that proposed or actual litigation is litigation of any fantasy or real offense of theft: suing for conversion, trespass to goods or any other tort is never suing for hybrid theft (of course Fraud Act 2006, s.3(a) in effect does criminalise deceit, and ibid. s.4 in effect does criminalise a variety of breaches of other general and particular civil law, but are not quite what we have in mind here)
beware the civil lawyer who complains, in credibility-destroying pre-litigation correspondence with the opposition, of 'inheritance theft' if there is no such offense and the lawyer is not litigating or prosecuting theft
demand to see the statutes creating the offense of 'inheritance theft' and 'inheritance hijacking'
demand to see the provisions in the relevant statutes making the relevant offenses actionable. (And of course do deep due diligence on everything else about that lawyer's track record of getting convictions in inheritance crime etc.)
MHNA educates victim heirs on the elementary differences between criminal and civil law, and the tricks of the civil practice trade in confusing the two:-
It is impossible to litigate theft unless relevant law explicitly permits it
even in that infinitely rare circumstance there's a process involved in the victim heir making a genuinely fully informed choice of course(s) of action and lawyers etc.
We educate civil lawyers on how to not confuse and mislead potential and actual customers about criminal and civil law and practice, and how to deal with inheritance crime as crime (meaning prosecution, never litigation unless the offense is statutorily hybrid and the necessary processes are undergone).
2: If law enforcement dismiss your assertions of inheritance crime with "It's a civil matter" — an idiotic presumptuous political non sequitur irrelevant to proper policing — don't be cowed or deflected:-
police and prosecutors are not particularly esteemed — they are not even known — for their prowess in civil law, and are seldom sought out for information about civil law or for their civil law opinions or civil law advice. We doubt if the grandiose asseveration, even if sought, is ever a relevant, proper or otherwise appropriate procedural or substantive retort in relation to crime
keep going all the way up to the top in every relevant law enforcement office in every relevant location in every relevant jurisdiction until you find a genuine specialist in inheritance crime with the intelligence, patience, integrity, loyalty and guts to deal with your assertions of criminality properly, thoroughly, honestly, diligently, conscientiously, expeditiously, efficiently, competently and effectively
MHNA's services to victim heirs include finding this law enforcement person for you and advocating your case to him irresistibly. We also deal with private prosecution lawyers who might not get the finer points of undetectable invisible plain-view inheritance crime, especially committed by estate managers and their lawyers. In both cases, MHNA provides comprehensive education and training about simple and intricate inheritance-specific and not-inheritance-specific crimes committed specifically in the inheritance context.
Some foci
MHNA looks at inheritance-related fact and law situations involving dishonesty and intent such as (a few examples from an infinity of instances; we mention others as appropriate elsewhere on this website):-
forged, defaced, adulterated, destroyed, lost, coerced, questionable, suspicious wills and codicils
deficient defective information, opinion, advice, acts, defaults etc., and other malpractice, by self-professed specialist lawyers
'turning', individually and collectively, by lawyers hired by the dead testator, monetised by them and utilised-monetised by the estate manager criminal; sabotage of the estate (Reed-Cron syndrome)
infiltration, sabotage etc. of a host estate by an alien-estate estate manager and her accomplices (Klovantch)
self-protecting and protective infiltration, etc. of the estate of an inheritance co-criminal by and or on behalf of a principal + accomplice estate manager and her accomplices (Burne-Rose manoeuvre)
coerced disinheritance
traded-in and new spouses, step-children: changed, not-changed wills
mental and physical abuse of wealthy friendless helpless elderly testators
kidnapping; forced incarceration and isolation
coerced powers of attorney and raiding of the testator's bank accounts
theft of entire art collections; fencing by accomplices at auction houses; criminal luvvies
inheritance-motivated homicide, assault
multi-estate multi-jurisdiction infiltration-arrogation
sabotage of estate claims out and capitulation to estate claims in
discard of the estate's irreplaceable instruction manual
bogus litigation against estate creditors; corrupt settlements
appearance and disappearance of offshore bank accounts
'mistakes' by banks
saturation continuum fractal multi-estate multi-jurisdiction criminality involving estate manager lawyers, their firms, outside lawyers (especially barristers and foreign lawyers) and rogue heirs
a legatee breaching the terms of the legacy, especially engineered, chronic, persistent
collusion between estate managers, lawyers, family members, factions of heirs
embezzlement, pillage of estate trust funds by estate managers and their lawyers
laundering of stolen estate trust money between the estate manager and her lawyers
the estate manager's failure to properly conduct the estate's front-office business; sabotage
strategically orchestrated duty-interest conflicts
the for-hire estate manager padding, churning, falsifying etc.
the estate manager's concocted bogus cost estimates to the heirs
the estate manager buying bogus legal and other services from her own firm, from outside lawyers etc.
invented inventories
the estate manager's false interim and final draft and final accounts, especially without complete whole-truth verified authenticated primary source material and the entire astorised under-lying file
the estate manager's inappropriate consent requests to the heirs
the estate manager's concealment, misrepresentation, abuse of position
bogus applications to the court for inappropriate orders; perverse judicial decisions
estate manager's resignation and replacement; her estate management accounts sneaked in to court
law enforcement refusal to take a clear-cut, conclusively evidenced, irrefutable criminal case
action, inaction, decisions etc. explicable only in terms of criminality (especially if criminality is the only possible holistic unifying theory) and otherwise inexplicable.
We are especially interested in (among many things):-
rackets, scams, gangs, especially involving lawyers specialising in inheritance law and practice
undetectable inheritance crime committed in plain view by estate managers, lawyers and heirs
multi-location crime involving the testator's unfinished front-office business
criminality by factions of heirs against minority heirs
criminality by the victim heir's own lawyers
numbers, whether or not contained in financial statements; criminality by bookkeepers, accountants, forensic accountants, auditors, forensic fiduciary auditors, tax officials
apparently or actually functional behavior in a saturation crime scene
the legal and practical effects of a saturation continuum estate manager criminal's acts and omissions; the legal impossibility of a saturation-continuum-fractal estate manager criminal acting lawfully or legitimately
Klovantch-related inheritance crime and its legal and practical effects, including Klovantch infiltration and arrogation mechanisms, mechanics, machinations and devices, eg the plainview multiply criminal 'consent request' and 'approval request' addressed to accomplice heirs and victim heirs, pseudo-assignments etc
recovery of stolen assets by a victim heir at his own expense: claims, disclaimer, renunciation etc. by criminal heirs; the victim heir's defenses and counterclaims; relevance of Klovantch and pseudo-assignment
inheritance criminality unfamiliar in theory, concept and practice to law enforcement
what inheritance facts, scenarios, crime scenes, prosecution processes are police and prosecutors really afraid of?
closing and re-opening a criminally managed estate; closing and re-opening its criminal management, etc.
collusion in inheritance crime by personnel working for regulators, disciplinary tribunals and professional bodies
the moral and intellectual range of criminal heirs and victim heirs.
More summary
Before- and after-death testamentary assets fall into the hands not only of criminal heirs but of an entire ecosystem of parasitic predators including lawyers (especially lawyers) and professional estate fiduciaries (mainly lawyers). And 'theft' is simplistic. The range of intra- and inter-jurisdictional, multi-dimensional, multi-layer, multi-stage, multi-party criminality that can envelope just one testator and one estate is encyclopedic: theft, criminal non-disclosure, criminal misrepresentation, criminal abuse of position, criminal accounting, money laundering, asset laundering, activity laundering, assault, kidnapping, impersonation, murder, forgery, obstructing justice, perjury…
MHNA is familiar with all this from real cases. A few favorite inheritance crime situations from our files:-
a solicitor criminal, a partner in an English law firm, criminally obtains a court appointment as interim administrator of a high-value intricate vulnerable estate, lies to a succession of courts, criminally institutes, conducts and settles bogus litigation, and infiltrates, undermines, sabotages and comprehensively criminalises a relatively unrelated estate — in conjunction with (among others) some of her law firm partners and juniors, at least four outside barristers, a Swiss tax lawyer, possibly a Swiss notaire, a policeman, two judges and eight rogue heirs (this massive comprehensive in-your-face plain-view criminality is ordinarily undetectable)
a victim heir hires at various points around ten self-professed specialist lawyers to help him deal with a case of massive inheritance criminality. They all behave criminally to him, and criminally give material criminal support and assistance to the inheritance criminals
multiple 'expert' lawyers in multiple jurisdictions giving patently bad advice to the criminal standard
'leave everything to me' solicitous elder abuse including coercion to make lifetime gifts, new will, codicils, etc. + contemporaneous theft (art, furniture, cash)
elaborate, brazen, flagrant inheritance crime hidden conspicuously in the plain sight of 'experts'
committed by organised criminals, especially gangs of lawyers, gangs of heirs and hybrid gangs
criminal cash, asset and activity washing, rinsing, bleaching, drying, ironing, starching etc. involving estate managers, power-attorneys, trusted insiders, lawyers, auction houses, corrupt private buyers, corrupt bankers, corrupt tax officials, corrupt police, corrupt judges, etc.
committed by estate manager criminals and their lawyers in criminal imaginary estate management
committed against high-value, intricate, vulnerable estates with complex factual and legal international and multi-jurisdictional dynamics
a Cambridge college — specifically, one or more of its employees specialising in soliciting and administering legacies — sits on a substantial legacy from an alumnus for more than sixteen years, doing nothing to honor it, lies in plain view about it, and then instructs (with whose money, knowledge and approval?) a firm of notoriously venal belligerent lawyers to write a comprehensively idiotic letter — this is not idiocy just from the law firm but specifically from the already dishonest customer college — to the incredulous concerned residuary heir that it will get round to doing something (unspecified) 'in the coming months' (there's nothing honest about any of this)
inherent and exherent duty-interest conflict crime (criminal evidence tampering a specialty)
sagely pronounced by 'expert' lawyers to be 'unprecedented', 'interesting', 'too difficult', etc.
criminal numbers: books of account, draft and final financial statements, tax filings etc. We are deeply concerned about accounting, accounts, accountants, auditing, audits, auditors and others in relation to interim and final draft and final estate manager financial statements prepared for the inner office, the back office, the front office, tax authorities etc.
criminal imaginary estate front-office litigation by the estate manager criminal and her lawyer accomplices against co-criminal front-office opponents: phoney claims, data criminality, brazen dishonesty to the court, 'eye-watering' criminal billing, etc. (and criminal chance'ry judges and costs judges)
committed by a succession of the victim heir's own multiply dishonest specialist saboteur lawyers colluding with heirs and the criminal estate manager and her gangs
sabotage of the testator's unfinished front-office business by the estate manager criminal in collusion with front-office opponents and others.
This barely scratches the surface of a vast subject.
MHNA is on top of it.