Dalke Smith & Maurstad Atty

Dan Jackson _{on Google}

Nov 3rd, 2019

Duane Smith should not be used for trusts or estate planning. He handled our family trust. He rewrote things 3 times through the years but the final one was the clinker. He suggested to my dad, while Dad was recovering from a stroke, that he needed to change his trustee to a local trust company, (the one he likes typically works through). Dad, not thinking clearly in the hospital, said sure ok. In the process of doing this, Duane took it upon himself to also remove a portion regarding purchasing annuities for beneficiaries at time of death, and at time of death all household affects went to bank and attorney to sell instead of immediately becoming property of beneficiaries without discussing it at all with Dad. Dad suggested a couple changes and Duane would not make them stating it would "mess up the page numbers" and he didn't want to have to retype the whole thing again and "trusts aren't written up that way." He did end up making a change but they were opposite of what Dad had requested, extending number of years for payout of assets to beneficiaries instead of shortening them. He had them sign a doctored up trust like this without them knowing what they were signing while they were still in rehab recovering from strokes. He then handed out differently stated trusts to the beneficiaries and the grantors. It was discovered 6 months later that there were two different trusts signed a week apart and what they actually said. Duane had pressured the grantors while they were in nursing home to sign the new trust without going over it with them citing a shortage of time. They didn't even realize they had been asked to sign two separate trusts a week apart. When they discovered this they were livid. A different attorney was hired and the trust was restated. Don't use this man for trusts or estate planning. And quite frankly, anyone capable of this kind of corruption shouldn't be practicing law at all.