What is your hourly wage? $15? $100?

Or are you an attorney who charges $250 to $550 per hour? And do you double bill your time shamelessly?

The attorney does have to pay his rent out of that astronomical fee. But he charges the client for his assistant and secretarial time on top of his hourly wage.

But, lawyers argue, regular folk are not required to hire an attorney. They can do the work themselves, if it is on their own behalf.

Except that so many judges have a bias against self-represented litigants. I have had judges base decisions against me on sentences the judges misquoted. (Judge Lee P. Rudofsky did this to me.) I have had a judge act with such an appearance of bias he received public discipline. (Former Commissioner Alan H. Friedenthal, deceased.) I have had Judge Susan Weaver do mental contortions in order to transfer ownership of 40 acres with a beautiful cabin from me as trustee to a man who wrote his intentions to defraud me in an exhibit that I showed to the judge.

Judge Weaver relied on the interpretation of the law against the unauthorized practice of law to apply to trustees who try to represent the interests of all the persons involved in the trust relationship.

My contention is that since I am the sole beneficiary, grantor and trustee, and I removed all contingent beneficiaries, I am allowed to represent everyone in the trust relationship now. This is a question that may need to be decided by SCOTUS.

Most trusts would not want to remove contingent beneficiaries. One of the main reasons to create a trust is to avoid probate. Judge Weaver drained my trust of all assets and gave a judgment against the trust that would make it foolish to put any more assets into the trust. So, as is, the trust was useless for the terminated contingent beneficiaries.

Even without a corrupt judge on the case, lawyers are expensive. As an individual I have a case on appeal involving an LLC. The actual money damages in the case are capped at about $120,000. An award of emotional distress and punitive damages is highly speculative. The attorney fees on a similar case were about $1M. No attorney wants to take this case on contingency. It does not make cents for them. (Pardon my pun.)

If you don’t already have “extra money” laying around, like $1,000,000, your trust will not be able to afford attorney fees.

If anyone sues the trustee for trust assets, the poor and middle-class trusts will be forced to settle or maybe just lose everything. The trusts will be drained of assets whether by the trustee’s attorney or the opposing party.

This is a serious disincentive for anyone but the affluent to create a trust.

One attorney estimated probate costs to be four times as high as creating a trust that avoids probate. (4% of assets instead of 1%)

As with sales tax, the less money a person has, the more probate costs hurt. Their heirs, of course.