A Facility You Can Refer To

A client asks where estate valuables should go. Recommending a self-storage unit or the representative's house creates exposure you can see. Recommending a facility that turns out to be evasive about legal process, or that cannot produce records, creates exposure you cannot see until it matters.

• We honor valid subpoenas and court orders, stated publicly.
• We do not offer anonymous or unrecorded arrangements.
• Every client and every authorized individual is identified.
• Records are written to be read by someone who was not there.
• We take no view on entitlement and never will.

Counsel is rarely shopping for storage. The call usually comes because a client has property that has to be secured before it becomes an issue, or because it already has — a contested inventory, a house being cleared on a deadline, a representative who is out of state. What is wanted in every one of those situations is the same thing: a defensible record that the firm did not have to create itself.

So the useful parts are narrow and specific. An inventory signed at intake. Named authorized parties recorded in writing, changed only in writing. A continuous custody record that predates any dispute. And a custodian that states its limits plainly — we comply with valid subpoenas and court orders, we are not privileged, and we do not adjudicate competing claims between beneficiaries. Counsel would rather hear that at the outset than discover it in a hearing.

1. 01Accept instruction on documented authority.
2. 02Inventory to a standard that survives scrutiny.
3. 03Hold neutrally where a matter is contested.
4. 04Provide identical records to every party you name.
5. 05Comply with court direction.

For contested matters, joint instruction from both sides at the outset is usually the cleanest arrangement, and it avoids the later argument about who chose the custodian.

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