3 years ago
They will bill for everything they possibly can, a...
They will bill for everything they possibly can, and they drag everything out for as long as they can. This is roughly how things work: if you send them an email, they will charge for reading the email, charge for analyzing the email, charge for discussing the email amongst themselves, and charge for replying to the email.
Even worse, if they do something wrong and then fix it - they bill for the time they spent making the mistake AND the time they spent fixing it. They were executors of an estate my aunt left. When I noticed them charging the estate for things that were unrelated to its management, they agreed to refund some of the costs. HOWEVER, they then charged the estate for reading my email complaint AND for formulating a refund a plan AND for undertaking the refund process.
Remember that when it comes to estates, fiduciaries are playing with house money - YOUR money. They don't have to worry about you not paying them because they can and will take every charge out of the estate. If there is any strife between them and you, they can just hire a lawyer with estate money. That's what occurred in my case.
When I bugged them too much, they hired a lawyer and billed the estate for it. They went to a court proceeding to have the court issue a ruling whether they were following the laws. The court agreed that they were. All the costs of those proceedings were billed to the estate. Although this was negative in that it drained the estate, it was a sort of blessing in disguise. I had been on the verge of hiring my own counsel anyway, and that could've ended up costing me more than paying theirs. Likewise, by them presenting the case in court, I am satisfied that, as greedy and cutthroat and UN-customer-friendly as they are, they were not breaking the law. Had they not gone to court, I'd be wondering to this day how many laws they broke.
Regardless of not having been found to have broken the law, their billing is diabolical, and I was told by a Phoenix attorney that Condit is known for that. They are known for taking something that seems like one-step and billing it into three.
And everything moves slowly. It took over 5 years from the time they became executors until the time all funds were paid out to me. It took them roughly two years to even start partial disbursements.
And their not the sharpest either. I emailed the gentleman who was handling our account, and it took three emails just to get him to send me a form that I was missing. I am not blaming them for not sending the form in the first place; they may have sent it. But just getting him to send me a copy took 3 emails from me and 2 from him. And of course, that was all billed to the estate. AND instead of emailing it like I requested, he mailed it, which enabled them to bill a little more than sending an email would.
If you're going to consider hiring them, have a consultation with them and have consultations with others. Ask them all about the types of things I've mentioned. Then make an informed decision.