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.
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.
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.
R v Cohn, a criminal charge of contempt. And there is also constructive contempt, where a party interferes with the administration of justice by being wilfully blind, found in fiduciary law. If a party knew of a procedural defect and stood by while the court was misled, the conduct meets the definition of contempt, but in fiduciary law it is not called contempt. It is called failure of the party to correct procedural irregularity, or worse, stands by silently while the court proceeds on incomplete information. It blows my mind that when you deal with fiduciary law, you cannot talk English, you are required to talk in code, so only a select few know what you are talking about. This colouring came from the courts of King Henry VIII where if you told the truth, you would be beheaded. Right now, in this time frame of history, it is called the language of the woke. No wonder I am confused and the ordinary person does not understand what the code means. There is no reason for the courts to use code to disquiet dishonest behavior.
Instead of me being given consideration I was disrespected by all the lawyers who used strict practice to deny me access to justice like not allowing me to have adjournments so I could be properly prepared to attend hearings. The first time was when I hated my brother, a beneficiary, so much that I never wanted him to get his inheritance. He signed an affidavit. The legal bill for that affidavit was $1,000 for which I was assessed to pay. No one asked me if I hated my brother. The second time, was because I wanted standing to know what was going on with a passing of accounts, I was wasting the court's time and the lawyers were misaligned. I was assessed costs because they said what I really wanted was to be the administrator and this was a backdoor way of achieving that status. We were at the end of probate and it was a bit late for me to challenge the appointment of the administrator. Of course, untrue motives mean something negative to say to the court, or else the lawyers would not have put them in the records at considerable legal costs which I was assessed to pay. The rules of court say if yoiu lose, you pay.
Self-represented parties often identify misconduct that was overlooked, which should have been considered by the court (Pintea v. Johns).
This blog is about my family's greed and how it deprived me of natural justice. Except for greed, there was no reason to treat me so cruelly. And it was and it is still cruel. I was subjected to eight court hearings and they are still not yet satisfied. None of this was necessary. I ams urprised that I am still functioning. When I said to one lawyer I was being denied access to justice, she said I deserved it.
I cannot get over what happened at the hearing on November 7 2025 the hearing to my mind was unfair as I believed that the court would never pass the accounts as there were disputes surrounding some of the expenses. I believed, the court would pause the process. The expenses have to be reasonable and necessary. Not discretionary as there is no scope as to what discretionary means. If there is discretion, it means: do you want cream in your coffee? Yes or No. Not we are going to buy you a coffee plantation so you can have fresh ground coffee beans for your morning coffee. I keep thinking of Somali and how crazy that went. Here is billions of dollars paid up front and we do not need receipts. No audit. We trust the NGO, it would only act in good faith. The NGO will feed the children.