Law Office of Linda Durston

Thank you for settling my aunt’s estate in a truly professional manner. My wife and I are glad we chose you to represent us.

We had a terrible experience with this attorney about four years ago.
My husband was named as trustee of my brother’s trust after my mother passed away. Initially it was worth about $ 200,000.
My brother is a mentally ill, homeless man living in the Berkeley area. He is easily agitated and paranoid. He became angry at my husband and contacted Linda Durston and she then contacted us. It took almost two months for her to contact us again after we sent her a copy of the trust and at that time, she told us she lost the trust and needed to have another copy sent.
It is my opinion that when my husband wrote her a letter explaining his rights as trustee and explaining fully that he was attempting to fullfill the terms of the trust as desired by my mother, Linda was somehow offended and then took it upon herself to begin proceedings against my husband to remove him as trustee.
The whole process took an inordinate amount of time because she apparently did not know that she had no legal standing in CA since my husband lives in a different state. She did her legal research online via an attorney list serve in which she asked other attorneys for help and in which she completely misrepresented the facts of the case. We discovered this when an attorney friend of ours on the list serve saw what she had written and forwarded it to us.
When a case worker we had hired to work with my brother met Linda, he told us that after speaking with her he felt she was determined to do whatever she could to not allow my husband to continue in his role as trustee. Despite it being winter and my brother being out on the streets, it would not have been favorable to her case for my brother to receive help from us and therefore she did not allow our case worker to speak to my brother!
Ultimately because of the cost of attorney’s fees and all the hassles, my husband gave up being trustee and an outside professional recommended by Linda assumed the role. He was a nice man but seemed inexperienced and naïve. My brother fired him eventually in a fit of paranoia and he is now working with his third trustee in four years. He is still homeless and the trust has been spent down on pointless items. It was supposed to last the rest of his life and is already 80% gone.
Basically, Linda decided what was best for my brother, that she knew him better than his own family did and she was wrong. And her arrogance has cost him thousands of dollars needlessly.
It is difficult to understand why someone in her position behaved this way and I definitely would tell anyone considering her services to stay away. There are plenty of other attorneys specializing in special needs trusts and estate planning in the Berkeley area.

So I’d like to write a scathing review here but honestly I’m afraid of being sued. So I’ll preface this by emphasizing that this is based on my experience and my opinion only. Other results may vary but the following documents my impression of the service I received.
I was named as trustee of my brother’s trust after our mother passed away. The estate was very small, a few thousand dollars (less than 30K) and some trinkets and used furniture. At first things were fine but as time went on I found Linda increasingly difficult to deal with. She often gave me the impression that she thought I worked for her rather than her working for the trust and for me by extension.
At times I found her very difficult to get in touch with and at one point she did not return my attempts to get in touch with her for more than two months. I think she would say that I was also hard to get in touch with but I was dealing with my mother’s death as well as administering this trust from the east coast. Also, she was being paid and I was not, it was her job to return my calls.
I found Linda to be condescending throughout my dealings with her. Despite the fact that she knew my academic background (MA) she still treated me like a yokel. At one point she implied to me that she was the ultimate decision maker in our work together. I felt that she often worked to undermine me with other parties.
Two years after my mother’s death there are still matters that are unresolved that are routine issues in estate and trust administration. I believe that this is due to the fact that despite asking several direct questions Linda never answered me or took action on things like changing the name on my mother’s mortgage and HELOC. I feel that she also roadblocked simple distributions and division of assets between the adult heirs and the trust that should have been routine.
My feelings were supported when another person involved in the trust administration related our experience to her own estate planner. The gist is that the other estate planner was shocked at how my mother’s affairs were set up and then administered under Linda Durston. It seems that in this other estate planner’s opinion there were red flags from the start and Linda’s inability to complete simple tasks were surprising.
In closing it is my opinion that Linda Durston is arrogant and impolite. She did not treat me, her client, with respect. se was slow to carry out simple tasks and refused to answer simple questions. I would not recommend her for estate planning or trust administration.
Once again, these are my opinions based on my experience.