At the end of the first day of a trial before Judge Portra in Brown County, the Judge granted our motion to require the return of $504,923.52 to a conservatorship.
During the conservatorship, all of these funds were placed in accounts at the First State Bank of Roscoe by John Beyers, or people acting on his behalf at the bank. Beyers was the power of attorney for the elderly gentleman in the conservatorship. All of these funds were then made payable to the conservator upon the elderly person’s death! The funds should have gone into his estate, and eventually to his son.
The Court ordered the conservator to return the funds to the Estate, because the conservator had a duty by court order to control and manage the funds. A conservator can’t self-deal, and a conservator can’t delegate the power to somebody to act on his or her behalf in this fashion. After the Court’s ruling, the smaller issues were dropped and the case settled for the amount the Court ordered.