Acting As Your Own Attorney - Probate Trust Case

**richzx14** · 07-10-2009, 03:51 PM

I am the named trustee for my deceased parent's estate in California. I am in a legal dispute with my siblings. There is an active civil case in the local county superior court. I have an attorney but may be interested in representing myself for a number of reasons. I may be interested in filing a substitute of attorney and name myself as the replacement attorney "in pro per".

MY QUESTION: Can a trustee represent themselves in a civil matter probate case?

Thanks in advance!

**Mr. Knowitall** · 07-12-2009, 09:11 AM

Are you asking about representing yourself, or about representing the trust?

**richzx14** · 07-12-2009, 12:20 PM

Quoting richzx14

I am the named trustee for my deceased parent's estate in California. I am in a legal dispute with my siblings. There is an active civil case in the local county superior court. I have an attorney but may be interested in representing myself for a number of reasons. I may be interested in filing a substitute of attorney and name myself as the replacement attorney "in pro per".

MY QUESTION: Can a trustee represent themselves in a civil matter probate case?

Thanks in advance!

Mr. Knowitall: I am not sure I understand the difference between representing myself or representing the trust. I have an attorney representing me currently that I want to replace with myself. So in my way of thinking, I would be both representing myself and the trust; but I am not clear. Can you elaborate a bit on your question please? Thanks for your reply.

**aaron** · 07-12-2009, 07:46 PM

If you don't know the difference between acting on your own behalf and acting on behalf of the trust, you should have your lawyer explain the difference to you. You do understand that as trustee you have a fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries, the trust assets belong to the trust and not you, you shouldn't commingle trust assets with your personal assets, etc., right?

**richzx14** · 07-12-2009, 08:03 PM

Aaron:

Maybe you misunderstood my comments. I have never co-mingled my assets with the trust assets ever. If I don't understand an explanation provided by one of the senior/expert responders on this forum, I merely stated that I did not understand the comments and asked for some additions clarification. The purpose of acting as my own attorney is eliminate the ever increasing attorney fees. To fully understand, you would obviously have to be aware of all the case details. I believed I asked a fairly simple question in my original posting but maybe not....