Lost of Public Trust, we saw it with Covid and it is/was continuing in estates. Beneficiaries lose millions/billions of dollars each year, by "leakage." The word that is used for estate theft.

from the internet. 

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When Fiduciary Duties Fail in Practice: Why Public Trust in the Legal System Is Eroding

Most people grow up believing that the law is a stable, reliable system — that judges apply the rules consistently, that government bodies act in the public interest, and that fiduciaries are held to the highest standards of accountability. But when you step inside the machinery of the legal system, especially as an ordinary citizen without a lawyer, you quickly discover a very different reality. The gap between what the law promises and how it actually operates is wide enough to swallow public trust whole.

One of the clearest examples of this gap appears in cases involving fiduciaries — especially government fiduciaries like the Public Guardian and Trustee. On paper, fiduciary law is one of the strictest areas of the common law. It requires complete transparency, full accounting, loyalty, and fairness. It reverses the usual burden of proof: the fiduciary must justify its actions, not the beneficiary. These rules exist to protect vulnerable people from being taken advantage of by those who manage their money or make decisions on their behalf.

But in practice, these protections often evaporate the moment the fiduciary is a government institution.

Instead of applying strict scrutiny, many judges and lawyers treat statutory bodies as inherently trustworthy. The assumption is that a government fiduciary is neutral, objective, and incapable of meaningful error. This belief is not grounded in law — it is grounded in institutional culture. And it has real consequences. When a beneficiary raises concerns about missing documents, incomplete accounts, or procedural unfairness, the response is often a shrug. The institution is presumed correct; the citizen is presumed mistaken.

This dynamic creates a structural imbalance that the public rarely sees until they are caught in it. Fiduciary duties, which should protect the beneficiary, end up protecting the institution instead. Procedural fairness, which should be the foundation of every legal process, becomes optional. And the ordinary person — the one the law is supposed to protect — is left feeling unheard, dismissed, and powerless.

The erosion of public trust doesn’t come from dramatic scandals. It comes from these quiet, everyday failures of accountability. It comes from courts treating government actors as infallible. It comes from lawyers who decline to challenge institutional decisions because they believe it is futile. It comes from a legal culture that prioritizes efficiency and deference over scrutiny and fairness.

The tragedy is that the law itself is not the problem. Fiduciary principles are clear, powerful, and protective. Procedural fairness is a cornerstone of justice. The problem is the disconnect between doctrine and practice — a disconnect that the public is never told about, but experiences firsthand when they try to assert their rights.

Restoring public trust requires more than repeating that “the system works.” It requires acknowledging where it doesn’t. It requires judges to apply fiduciary duties consistently, even when the fiduciary is a government body. It requires lawyers to challenge institutional assumptions instead of reinforcing them. And it requires transparency — not just in legal doctrine, but in how the system actually functions.

Ordinary citizens can trust the law only when the law is applied as written, not as assumed. Accountability is not a threat to institutions; it is what keeps them legitimate. And until fiduciary duties are honoured in practice, not just in textbooks, public trust will continue to erode — not because people misunderstand the law, but because they understand all too well how it fails them.

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Estate Leakage is not only about money.

From AI.  Why I am angry.  

Estate Leakage Is Not Just About Money

It Is the Slow Disintegration of the Rule of Law

When people hear the phrase estate leakage, they think of money going missing.
A few unaccounted expenses. A questionable invoice. An unpaid occupation rent.

That framing is dangerously incomplete.

Estate leakage is not just a financial loss.
It is a moral and legal loss—and over time, a social one.

Because what leaks out of estates does not stop at dollars.
What leaks out is trust, lawfulness, and ultimately belief in the justice system itself.

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Leakage Begins Quietly — and That’s the Problem

Estate leakage rarely begins with obvious wrongdoing.

It starts softly:

• “It’s not worth the cost to pursue.”

• “Let’s just compromise.”

• “This is rough justice.”

• “Everyone agrees.”

• “No one is objecting.”

Each phrase sounds reasonable in isolation.
Together, they form a permission structure for lawlessness.

Fiduciary rules—among the strictest in law—are gradually treated as guidelines.
Proof is replaced with estimates.
Entitlement is replaced with convenience.

No one calls it theft.
No one even calls it wrong.

And that is precisely how the damage spreads.

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Fiduciary Law Exists to Prevent Social Breakdown

Fiduciary law is not technical trivia.
It exists because history has already taught us what happens without it.

When someone is entrusted with another person’s property—especially after death—the law demands:

• Loyalty

• Full disclosure

• No self-enrichment

• Strict accounting

• Independent scrutiny

Why so strict?

Because estates sit at a dangerous intersection:

• Power without immediate oversight

• Vulnerable beneficiaries

• Delayed accountability

• Emotional and financial stress

Relax fiduciary standards here, and you don’t just lose money.
You lose the shared understanding that law restrains power.

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When Law Stops Working, Anger Fills the Vacuum

People do not become angry because they are greedy.
They become angry because injustice is denied a remedy.

When beneficiaries see:

• Conflicts rewarded

• Silence treated as consent

• Objections dismissed as “troublemaking”

• Courts prioritizing finality over correctness

• Institutions declining scrutiny to “save costs”

They learn a devastating lesson:

The law will not protect you—even when it says it will.

That realization does not create peace.
It creates resentment. Distrust. Alienation.

And eventually, people stop believing in lawful processes at all.

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This Is How Societies Slide Toward Lawlessness

Lawlessness does not begin with riots.
It begins with selective enforcement and procedural shortcuts.

When people observe that:

• Rules apply differently depending on who benefits

• Fiduciaries can enrich themselves if no one objects loudly enough

• Institutions excuse inaction as pragmatism

• Courts tolerate “good enough” instead of lawful

They stop seeking justice through institutions.

They withdraw.
They disengage.
Or worse—they take matters into their own hands.

That is not because people are inherently reckless.
It is because unresolved injustice radicalizes ordinary people.

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Estate Leakage Normalizes the Abuse of Power

What is most corrosive is not the loss of money.
It is the normalization of this idea:

“If you are in control, you can take—so long as no one stops you.”

That lesson does not stay confined to estates.
It spreads:

• To family dynamics

• To professional culture

• To institutional behavior

• To public confidence

Every unchallenged leakage teaches the next fiduciary that rules are flexible.
Every rubber-stamped account teaches the next beneficiary that objections are futile.

That is how law erodes—not with a bang, but with administrative indifference.

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Justice Is Not Expensive — Injustice Is

Institutions often justify inaction by citing cost.

But this is a profound misunderstanding.

Justice has a cost.
Injustice has compound interest.

It produces:

• Endless litigation

• Escalating hostility

• Public distrust

• Institutional decay

• Loss of voluntary compliance with the law

People comply with law not because of fear, but because they believe it is fairly applied.

Once that belief collapses, enforcement alone cannot replace it.

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The Real Question Is Not “Is It Worth It?”

The real question is:

What kind of society are we building when fiduciary law becomes optional?

One where:

• Power is unchecked

• Conflicts are tolerated

• Silence is mistaken for consent

• Law is replaced by convenience

Or one where:

• Trust is enforced

• Accountability is non-negotiable

• Rights do not evaporate with inconvenience

• Justice is seen to be done

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Estate Leakage Is a Warning Signal

Every leaked dollar is a symptom.
The disease is the quiet abandonment of legal principle.

If we allow estates—one of the most trust-dependent areas of law—to be governed by rough justice and expedience, we should not be surprised when faith in the legal system collapses elsewhere.

Because when people see law fail in the most intimate and vulnerable moments—death, inheritance, family—they stop believing it will protect them at all.

And that is how societies begin to fracture.

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Estate Asset Diversion

 In my recent research in the deep internet estimated annual estate losses "leakage" in BC is between $500 million and $2 billion a year.  

Now further research has to be done to find out how the actors are getting away with it.  Perhaps it is because leakage happens so often that it has become normalized with beneficiaries losing millions of dollars and not even knowing it.  

Threats of legal fees

 The more I get into trying to understand what is happening, the more I see it as being silent alignments among the parties.  Fiduciary law is being set aside in the mistaken belief that insisting on fiduciary law will deplete an estate.  Nothing will be depleted if the lawyers tell beneficiaries the truth; they do not have to compromise or give away their inheritances, because to go to court will be costly, that is an empty threat, but this deception works. There is a fool born every minute and beneficiaries are fools.  If you go to court fiduciary law will be followed but the lawyers do not tell you that they just say if you go to court it will be costly.  It will never happen if the law is black and white, which is what fiduciary law is.  If an administrator owes occupation rent, pay it.  It is the law and trying to go to court on that is an abuse of process.  It will never happen.  And lawyers know it will never happen. But negotiating an empty threat at $600 an hour is lucrative.  Like the $5,000 my lawyer charged me for telling me that the beneficiaries would not agree to me being administrator.  It is not up to the beneficiaries, it is up to the court.  

Somali fraud

 I keep thinking about the Somali fraud scandal.  I see it as the same as what happened to the modest estate I am involved with as a beneficiary.  The trustee/fiduciary approved the invoices without verification.  And when the issue came before the courts, the court held that, since the trustee was a trusted institution, it was not necessary to scrutinize its expenses.

The Somali fraud is being found in California and other states as well.    

Why # 1

 These past few days I have been thinking about what happened and now I realize how fragile the law is.

On the surface it is understandable but it really isn't.  I had no idea that lawyers could say things with the intent to deflect from the real issues, poisoning the well, and it is tolerated.  For example, they had my brother swear an affidavit that would be interpreted that I hated him and I did not want him to get his inheritance, as I was delaying the process by filing an application to ask the court to revoke the Grant as it was void as due process was absent.  The P1/P2 were not served on all the parties. The unfortunate point is that the affidavit along with a similar affidavit by the administrator is the only reason I can think why the Justice, for want of a better word, was mean to me.  He dismissed my application and because I wasted the court's time I was assessed special costs ($25,000).  Otherwise he could have just said application dismissed as I (the justice) agree with the lawyer for the administrator that service was done according to the rules. 

When I read the affidavits, I just thought the lawyers must be stupid, how did I know that it was a legal strategy to keep an unqualified administrator in office?  And for that, the administrator's lawyer billed the Estate $83,000, mostly to defend this application.  Why didn't my sister, a conflicted administrator, just withdraw and an independent administrator who had no conflicts be appointed.  What the fuck is going on.  

I will tell you how stupid this is.  I am 80 years old and my brother is 79 years old.  My brother is financially secure, I live in a basement teardown.  I need the inheritance more than he needs it.  This is true of the other beneficiaries as well.  Of course the judge would not admit he was poisoned but why then would he assess special costs against me.  It was a simple application at the most it could have been $5,000.  

Note:

I did some research on special costs.  And yes the court can award special costs where a party's motive or conduct has wasted the court's time.  Special costs are not assessed unless the lawyers asks for them.  Most lawyers do not ask for them, because it will cause reputational damage to them be it justified or not. I live in the City and Kamloops is a distance away, no chance of my big mouth being heard. I had no idea what the assessed costs would be. Special costs are calculated (different tiers) based on the work done. It is not a fine. Candace sent me her bill for $25,000, NINE months later. Now I have another litigation I have to worry about. I have to take Candace to court to tax her $25,000 cost assessment.  Now another judge will decide if everything Candace did was necessary and reasonable and the cost assessment can be reduced. I am now questioning every single humiliation I perceived and now I can see it was deliberate.  What is happening to me is the underbelly of the court system we live under. I saw a procedural error, I tried to fix it, I get tossed under the bus.  A chilling effect on others who need the courts to clarify a process. 

  

The Dark Web and Fiduciary Law

 I keep thinking about why a black and white law, fiduciary law, is like the dark web, both are hard to understand and access.  No one really understands fiduciary law as it is a law for the dead but it is enacted  as it is for the living. Fiduciary law protects estates from possible exploitation by the living as the dead cannot advocate. When I said the administrator should withdraw, I was told I produced no evidence. Fiduciary law does not say I had to provide evidence, the administrator had to prove she was qualified. Under fiduciary law, the burden of proof is reversed.  This also goes to the expenses in a passing of accounts.  The administrator has to prove each expense was reasonable and necessary, it is not up to a beneficiary. The administrator, cannot be the same person, the person who spends the money and approves the expense. These basic fundamentals were entirely absent from the probate.