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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA legal malpractice lawsuit over the creation of a trust was barred by a two-year statute of limitations, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed Wednesday.
The adult children of a man who died in 2020 had sued attorney F. Jefferson Crump III over the creation of a qualified terminable interest property trust for their father and the woman he married after their mother died.
Julia Beaman and William Bobbs Jr. said in court documents that the trust paid “excessive amounts” to their father’s wife, well beyond what he intended. They also expressed concern about a potential conflict of interest because Crump had done some legal work for the woman, who was one of his high school teachers.
William Bobbs Sr. had executed the trust in 2018 to ensure that his wife Jan could continue to live in the Four Seasons Retirement Community if he were to die first. The couple moved there in early 2018, shortly after he executed the trust and under a continuing care agreement.
After Bobbs died in 2020, Jan fell and injured herself, which forced her to move to a different unit at the retirement community that charged “substantially” higher fees for her to stay there, the appellate court opinion noted.
Bobbs’ children sued Crump and Jan in 2022, a year before she died.
The court noted in an opinion filed Wednesday that Bobbs’ children knew about the trust because they talked with his father and attorneys about it, but they never challenged it as invalid in the two years after it was created. They also did not ask for a copy of it.
The appellate court also said their claim of legal malpractice was barred by the statute of limitations since they waited more than two years after the trust’s creation to assert it.
The appellate court affirmed a Marion Superior Court decision to grant Crump’s motion for summary judgment.
The case is Julia Beaman and William Bobbs Jr. v. F. Jefferson Crump III, Estate of Carolyn Janice Bobbs and First Financial Bank, N.A., 25A-PL-2471.
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