My last post asked whether you can trust your relatives with title to substantial amounts of your money.

All of us would like to think that we can.

Very few think they can’t.

But no matter how much you would like to believe in them, DON’T.

Too many people have been victimized by relatives, when they misplaced their trust, and allowed the relative to hold an ownership interest in property with or without the original owner/potential victim.

Stories abound about a son or daughter taking title to property and promising to share it with siblings, even though nothing is put in writing.  After the former owner’s death, the son or daughter who had title conveniently forgets about any promises to share the property or proceeds of a sale.

In the last three months, I’ve seen one or two potential clients a week who have been victimized in same or similar general circumstances.  The cases seem to be involving more and larger amounts of money.  It could be that the size of the claims are correlative to the decline in the economy and the need of more people to have access to funds for survival.

So in answer to the question posed in the title to this post, the first rule of asset protection is not to trust anyone, no matter how close, particularly relatives.  Your relatives may prove you wrong, but why take the chance?