If you have no family members or close friends, or none that you can trust or is old enough to handle the duties of being your personal representative, then making a choice of who you name as your personal representative can be difficult. You can nominate who will be the personal representative for your estate in your will or the probate court will nominate someone for you and this person may not be the best qualified or most able to come up with a plan to distribute your assets. When you are making your will there may come a difficult decision if you can think of no one to be your personal representative. You may have children that are too young or you may not have anyone you can trust with the duty. If you name no one as personal representative in your Will the probate court will name someone for you. The better choice may be a bank trust department or your estate planning attorney. These individuals will carry out your wishes and have no interest in your estate. They may be entitled to up to five percent of the total estate as payment, but a set fee may be negotiated ahead of time. You can negotiate a set fee that will be compensated from your estate so loved ones will not be directly charged for service that the PR provides.

A neutral third party may also be in the best position to make difficult decisions that may have to be made on how to divide up property or other responsibilities without emotions or hurt feelings getting involved that can be present when family members serve the role. A third party may be your best choice if no one else is in position to serve.

Author’s Description:

I christopher of the fleming family, is my understanding and I christopher am: EXECUTOR AND BENEFICUARY, WITH FULL POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR THE LEGAL PERSON CHRISTOPHER ALYRE FLEMING NOTICE TO AGENT IS NOTICE TO PRINCIPAL attention DMV REGARDING ACCOUNT NUMBER D4739844 i have receiced your notice, i had appeared in a local dmv (pomona, ca) upset about a representative from the dmv appearing in court to testify against me claiming that i am in contract with i waited all day and spoke to a very unplesant supervisor who gave me a bunch of bullshit about there is noway to cancel my driving license as it is currently Finally hours later she produced a 1/3 sheet of paper that seemed to be a cancelation of my drivers I signed the document with a full reservation of my natural unalienable and legal It is my understanding the DMV currently beleives that we are in contract, please present a original wet ink signature Failure to provide a certified is true wet ink signature contract that i have endorced agreeing to only drive or travel with permission from the A copy of a law stating the sovereign people of the republic of california may NOT access public roads by any means the sovereign deems it is my understanding driving is a commercial activity, driver is defined in blacks law dictionary as one whom is being paid to transport goods, cargo, or services for a I am not a driver and i have never been a i have

Education

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The mediator might be trying his hardest to be fair and honest, but even so the process is rigged. To understand why, let’s first go back to who the mediator is.

A mediator is usually (but not absolutely always) a lawyer. You can pretty much count on it being a lawyer, though. That is useful and appropriate in general because you generally want someone who knows how the legal process works and what you might encounter, in general, if you went to court. At the least it will almost certainly be someone who spends a lot of time in court or with lawyers.

Often the parties are given a list of “approved” mediators by the court. You’d have to get permission to get someone else. In some situations, I guess, the parties are completely free to find their own mediator.

And I gather that in some situations a mediator is just assigned by the court automatically, and you don’t get to choose.

Mediation is Rigged

Whatever way it works, the lawyer has an advantage. The mediators have a reputation, and the lawyers can find out what that reputation is far more easily than you can. They won’t use a mediator who has a reputation of pushing too hard against them.

And the mediators know that, of course. You see, the debt collection lawyers are “constant.” They handle many, many of these cases, and if one of them decides never to use a mediator…well, that could be a lot of money to the mediator. If you decide against a mediator or don’t like him or her after going through the process, your options are extremely limited. Your opinion simply doesn’t matter as much to the mediator. And that’s true of everything in the whole process.

Lawyers Trust Lawyers

Next, have you ever heard the saying that “everything looks like a nail to someone who is good with a hammer?” That will apply to mediation. As I said, you can pretty much expect the mediator to be a lawyer or at least an ex-lawyer. Lawyers tend to respect, trust and understand other lawyers.

The mediator might like and respect you and be warm and friendly and all that. But when the chips are down, the mediator will tend to trust and believe the lawyer more than you. And he or she will expect you to lose the case if it goes to trial, no matter what the evidence shows, because of this sympathy to the lawyer for the debt collector.

And this is true even if the mediator doesn’t specially trust or respect collection lawyers. We all know that debt collection isn’t rocket science, but lawyers come basically from the same caste, and they expect other lawyers to be able to beat non-lawyers.

Your Advantages Could Get Forgotten

The mediator will get paid regardless of whether you settle, and regardless of who wins. That reduces the amount of attention the mediator must spend on your central advantage: the price of litigation.

Further, the mediator will almost certainly not know much about debt law or the debt collection business. That means the mediator will tend to undervalue your second main advantage, the Rules of Evidence. If you have my materials (you should!), you will probably know far more about the relevant law and the “facts of life” in debt litigation than the mediator does. That’s because lawyers tend to take sides in their lives. I would never have represented a debt collection company, and debt collector lawyers rarely defend against debt collectors. So no debt collection attorney from either side would be likely to be truly impartial.

And most other lawyers don’t know much about debt collection at all. Thus the mediator’s tendency to trust and believe the debt collector is magnified in importance.

Mediation Can be Intimidating

Finally, let’s consider the mediation process itself. It’s a chance for one-on-one combat (so to speak) between the parties without the rules of evidence being so important. (And the rules of evidence are another of your biggest advantages). The debt collection lawyer will act like he can prove everything -no sweat. The mediator will believe that. Both will exert pressure on you to “realize” how strong the debt collector’s case is. You will feel lonely and outnumbered. The debt collector’s lawyer feels no risk in this situation -it’s just a job to him-whereas the personal stakes are much higher for you.

What You Must Remember

Through it all, you have to remember, cling tenaciously to the facts that.. most debt collections lawyers do not have the evidence they need to win their case and cannot get it cheaply enough to go to trial against you and make money. What have they actually shown you? Can they pull up and show you and the mediator an affidavit from the original creditor that proves that they, the debt collector, actually own the debt, how much it is, that you owe it and didn’t pay? Can they prove that you owe the money? How? Remember that if they want to introduce any account information from the original creditor they’ve got to have either a witness or an affidavit. Can they get it cheaply enough to justify the expense? Not likely! You may have to remind the mediator of these facts-many times.

Don’t Forget Collection Risk

Also, you have to remember their “collection risk.” How likely are they going to be able to collect the money from you? If you didn’t pay (and if you owed) it was probably because you couldn’t afford to pay. Just because they manage to get a judgment, if they do and over your strenuous efforts in court and before, that doesn’t mean, by a long shot, that they’ll get their money.

Your Advantages

Your main tasks in mediation are to remember these facts. And to remember not to provide them any information or material that could help them get past these problems. If you say you could pay, or if you admit the account was yours…you make their job in court much easier.

Also, remember your advantage: if they have a lawyer or two present, the clock is running, and someone is paying and not very happy about that. Time is on your side in mediation as elsewhere. Remember the Litigation materials and what your advantages are. If you can withstand the fear and temptation to give up, you’ll be in very good shape and can settle (or not) according to what is really in your best interests.