Community First Trust

As an estate planning attorney, I often work with professional trustees. Bill Kerst, Leslie Ballentine, and all of the folks at CFT provided needed services when families are at their most vulnerable. They handle the details that people love to delegate or just do not want to handle. They are efficient and capable. Their expertise is worth the cost.

Where do I start...

CFT is one of the only trust groups avaiable in the Hot Springs area. I had the pleasure of working with a staff member named Frank Waddell who was assigned to mange the trust of both my sister and I. This trust was taken over by Community First trust after an investigation into the mismanagement of the past trustee's. The trust company won our case and my sister and I were awarded property and cash. This was a great thing we were both very happy and felt things were moving in a great direction. Soon upon receiving the trust we also finally got to review the actual trust document itself. We discovered that my granfather had a large piece of land that was included in the assets held by the trust. This was awesome but unfortunantly the trust group had other intentions with what they claimed as there fiduciary responsability. That responsability was to sell MY GRANDFATHERS LAND without a discussion with us, the beneficieries. OK -still we had never seen the land, that we didnt know about; held by the trust and managed by the previous trustee's., so we wanted to go and check it out. Turns out its some of the most beautiful riverside land we had ever seen. So thats when things took a turn for the worse with CFT. We looked into the language of the trust and it did have stipulations that the trustee's had the option to manage the land or the ability to liquidate things if needed. Well thats the play they went for, they told us they were going to sell the land and put it in our account but thats not what we the beneficieries wanted. Also in my grandfathers trust was a long outline and extensive list of how he wanted to have the farm property managed and what rules could apply to the management and how it could be applied back into the farm to help its upkeep and improve it over time. At this point we thought selling the land was not the option we wanted and so the beneficieries of the trust all made an agreement to seperate the assets to one sister with the land and one sister with all the cash and other assets. Well CFT spent the next 8 months denying every request we made (medical treatment and student hosuing for college) to have these assets designated and or any other request for things outlined as covered expenses by the trust. They even told me that I needed to BUY BACK MY THE LAND MY GRANDFATHER LEFT ME. We got a lawyer at around the 5th month . Sarah Cotton Patterson, She agreed with us and our view about the trust laws and the moral principals behind wanting to keep my grandfathers land. CFT used our trust account dollars to pay for there own lawyer associated to denying our requests and in turn they prolonged the litigation and further increased the cost for everyone involved. THEY USED OUR TRUST MONEY TO PAY FOR THEIR LAWYERS TO FIGHT AGAINST US. I then was essentially paying for 2 lawyers -1 working for me and 1 working against me. THIS IS CRAZY. Well, Sarah cotton Patterson and our rationality/ Moral prinicoals prevailed with the Court and My sister and i were awarded the assett designation by the judge. WE WON, YAY but no instead we did get what we requested, but they took money from the account that received the cash assets. We got billed for winning a case that was only put into motion becassue of CFT's inability to see the trust laws for what they were. We are now filing a civil lawsuit against CFT for the cost of litigation associated to the asset designation and costs of the lawyers involved in the case,we would like this to be a trial by jury so that CFT can make the proper changes to what we would call ethical standards when working with clients. .

Leslie Ballentine CPA - Chief Financial Officer, Hot Springs had no understanding or compassion for our position. She activily worked against our wishes for the trust.

Please DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY. IT HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT HEARTACHE. THEY ARE A MONEY HUNGRY COMPANY WHO WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE. Its hard enough to loose a loved one, yet along have to go into a legal battle to try to preserve their memory.

To be continued...