The following is Part 3 of our 4-Part series on Probate Funding by Steven D. Schroeder, Esq., General Counsel/Sr. Vice President at Inheritance Funding Company, Inc. since 2004. You can find Parts 1 & 2 here and here.

Probate Assignments are Adequately Regulated in California

In California, it is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Probate Court to determine entitlement for distribution, Cal. Probate Code §§11700-11705. Probate Courts may also apply equitable principles in fashioning remedies and granting relief in proceedings otherwise within its jurisdiction. Estate of Kraus (2010) 184 Cal. App 4^th 103, 114, 108 Cal. Rptr. 3d 760, 768. Thus, even without a specific statute addressing assignments, Probate Courts in California, as well as other jurisdictions, have conducted oversight over the propriety of Assignments in Probate.  See In Re: Michels’s Estate 63 P. 2d 333, 334 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. 1936).

The following is Part 2 of our 4-Part series on Probate Funding by Steven D. Schroeder, Esq., General Counsel/Sr. Vice President at Inheritance Funding Company, Inc. since 2004. Part 1 can be found here.

Comparing Assignments with Loans: Apples Are Not Oranges

As previously stated, there has been some recent criticism of the companies engaged in Probate funding.[1] An Article entitled: “Probate Lending” started and ended with the premise that Probate Assignments are in fact disguised loans and should be regulated as such. Despite the predetermined conclusion by one author, in fact, the law treats Assignments and Loans quite differently and those distinctions are significant.[2]

The following is a contributed article by Steven D. Schroeder, Esq., General Counsel/Sr. Vice President at Inheritance Funding Company, Inc. since 2004. 

There have been a few recent articles written on the topic of Probate Advances.[i] Probate Advances are available because a handful of companies are willing to assume a risk and provide funding in return for a partial assignment of a beneficiary’s interest in an Estate, and to a lesser extent Trust Proceedings. One critic has conflated Assignments to Loans without a fair analysis of the many differences between the two legal maxims.[ii] This 4-part series expands upon those differences and provides a legal and practical perspective as to why Probate Advances are a useful option for so many.

In this episode, we sat down with Ross Wallin, Co-Founder of NY-based Curiam Capital, which just opened its doors this past February. Ross spoke about why he made the transition from litigator to litigation funder, how Curiam differentiates itself from the competition, how law firms can utilize litigation finance to increase their rack rate realization, and how he feels about the future growth potential of the industry.

In this episode, we spoke with Dilip Massand of Dubai-based SAS about litigation finance in the Middle East, the benefits of being an asset recovery firm with a litigation funding…

On this week’s episode, we sat down with Ed Truant, Managing Director of Balmoral Wood, a Canadian Fund of Funds (FoF) for the Litigation Finance space. Ed discussed how the…

In this week’s episode, we discuss issues surrounding Privilege in the context of Third Party Litigation Funding. How does the privilege situation differ across jurisdictions? What do the Chevron and…

In this episode, Tom Glasgow of IMF Bentham discusses Third Party Litigation Funding in East Asia. What types of cases are being looked at, and what can we expect down…