Estate of Ben-Ali

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Parties Taruk, born in 1968, was the only biological child of Hassan Ben-Ali and Ann Jackson. Hassan and Jackson were married in 1973 and divorced in 1974, but maintained a relationship over the next 34 years. Hassan also had a son from a different relationship, D‘Artagnan Lloyd, with whom Hassan had little contact before 2006. According to Hassan‘s attorney, respondent Ivan Golde, Hassan was a very shrewd and savvy real estate investor who had owned a lot of properties over the years and had also gone

1 All statutory references are to the Probate Code unless otherwise indicated. through financial problems, including tax problems. One of Hassan‘s properties was an apartment building at 2235 Ashby Avenue in Berkeley (hereafter Ashby property or Ashby building), which Hassan had transferred to Taruk in approximately 1993, perhaps to avoid losing the property to the IRS. In 1995, Jackson moved into an apartment in the Ashby building. Hassan occupied another apartment in the building at that time and, according to Jackson, continued to handle all aspects of managing the property despite title being in their son‘s name. On August 3, 2002, Taruk married appellant…