For The Sake Of The Children
The South Carolina Supreme Court has disbarred an attorney for misconduct in two matters.
He was trustee of a trust he had created for a client who then passed away
Upon the death of Client A in 2018, Respondent became Trustee of the Trust, and billed the Trust for his services and expenses through his law firm. Over the next year, Respondent transferred funds from the Trust’s brokerage account into his law firm’s escrow account and made charitable distributions and paid taxes on behalf of the Trust. Beginning in April 2020, Respondent made a series of six distributions from the Trust to pay tuition for his daughter’s attendance at a school in Alabama (School) that conducted a long-term treatment program for girls with mental health and behavioral issues. In making the initial payment to the School, Respondent misrepresented to the admissions coordinator that he had received a grant from a trust to pay his daughter’s tuition. Over the next twelve months, Respondent made six separate payments from the Trust totaling $52,000 to fund his daughter’s attendance at the School. In the process of transferring the funds from the Trust’s brokerage account, Respondent instructed his staff to prepare invoices that misrepresented the purpose for which the transferred funds would be used. Respondent admits he knew at the time that this money was not his to spend for personal expenses and that using the Trust’s funds to pay his daughter’s tuition violated both the terms of the Trust and the fiduciary duties he owed to the Trust and its beneficiaries.
He decided to invest trust funds in real estate and assigned the contract to his son
After closing the transaction on the Townhome, Respondent did not monitor the loan to ensure his son was making timely payments. In December 2021, Respondent learned his son had missed two monthly loan payments and gave his son money towards the outstanding balance. Respondent considered having his son refinance the loan on the Townhome so the Trust would no longer serve as the mortgagee; however, due to a rise in interest rates, Respondent’s son was unable to afford monthly payments on a new loan, and Respondent’s son decided to sell the Townhome. In April 2023, Respondent’s son sold the Townhome for $375,000—a total of $105,000 more than the Townhome’s initial purchase price. Respondent’s son repaid the Trust from the proceeds of this sale.
The second matter involved his dealings with a husband and wife for whom he had mishandled a foreclosure.
Sanction
In his affidavit in mitigation, Respondent takes responsibility for his misconduct and expresses remorse for his actions. He also emphasizes: (1) he self-reported his misconduct; (2) he has no prior disciplinary history; (3) the trust corpus increased in value from $2.1 million to $3.1 million during his tenure as trustee; (4) the severity and treatment-resistance of his teenage daughter’s longstanding mental health and behavioral issues and his stress-related heart attack in July 2021 underlying his “lapse in judgment”; (5) his belief that the mortgage loan to his son was a good investment for the trust; (6) his resignation as trustee; (7) his payment of restitution; and (8) his good reputation in the community as demonstrated through seventeen letters submitted on his behalf by friends, clients, and colleagues. In light of these factors, Respondent requests that the Court consider imposing a three-year definite suspension retroactive to the date of his interim suspension as a sanction for his admitted misconduct.
The court concluded that the misconduct merited disbarment. (Mike Frisch)