ARKANSAS, USA — A Crawford County attorney has been accused in a lawsuit of taking advantage of two developmentally disabled siblings in Alma by charging nearly $200,000 of a $700,000 trust fund created to support their needs.
Larry and Loreva Boatright were left with a trust fund from their sister Barbara Steffen who died from Parkinson's in 2021. According to the lawsuit filed by a lawyer representing the siblings, Barbara's primary intention behind the trust was to support the "lifetime needs" of her siblings due to their disabilities and limited employment ability.
Two other beneficiaries were included in the trust: Dylan Conrad and Brian Steffen, the latter of whom also has disabilities and is believed to be in a nursing home in Bryant.
Prior to Barbara's death, an amendment was made to the trust that separated Larry, Loreva, and Brian's shares "in order to safely hold and carefully distribute the funds" to confidently ensure the funds will provide for their basic needs, the lawsuit says.
Between Loreva and Larry, their share of the trust totaled 75% of the total amount in the fund, an amount in which Van Buren Attorney Gentry Wahlmeier is accused of "baiting and switching" the siblings into signing over one-third of that total amount to him for his work in distributing the money.
Distribution of the trust:
- Loreva Boatright: 40%
- Larry Boatright: 35%
- Dylan Conrad: 13%
- Brian Steffen: 12%
While Barbara was alive, she reportedly made a deal with Ameriprise to distribute the trust when she died, however, the lawsuit states that after Barbara's death, Ameriprise "declined to serve."
Eventually, Larry and Loreva were referred to Van Buren Attorney Gentry Wahlmeier.
Wahlmeier was reportedly employed by Larry and Loreva to create their "supplemental needs trusts," which according to the lawsuit, may not have actually even been needed, but "even if they were, that is all the legal work that Larry and Loreva needed, and that is all the legal work that they wanted."
Our affiliate Arkansas Business spoke to Timothy Russell, the president of Estate Planners of Arkansas, who said that a trustee's duty is to ensure that the rules of the trust are being followed and that beneficiaries aren't being cheated.
He said that the special needs trust that Wahlmeier worked on was largely redundant because Steffen had already made provisions for her siblings, the Boatrights. Russell said all the work required of Wahlmeier was getting two or three tax IDs, which are free, and arranging for a trustee to be appointed.
“And so that would have been maybe an hour’s worth of work,” Russell told Arkansas Business.
The lawsuit states that the work requested by Larry and Loreva "should have taken a minimal amount of work (an hour or two at the very most)" and should only cost a "few hundred dollars."
In early 2023, caretakers for Larry and Loreva reportedly realized that Wahlmeier had charged them $197,591 for creating the documents, an amount of money that was disbursed from the trust into Wahlmeier's law firm.
The nearly $200,000 fee is, according to the lawsuit, the largest payout of the entire trust distribution—larger than each of the four named beneficiaries.
In February 2022, Wahlmeier filed a petition to appoint Citizens Bank & Trust as the trustee of Larry and Loreva's trust, which was granted in May 2022.
The lawsuit states that Wahlmeier sent a letter to Joe Stewart, who reportedly serves as the bank's trust officer, senior vice president, and cashier, to send a check "to Wahlmeier Law Firm, P.A. for 33% of the gross value of Larry Boatright and Loreva Boatright's share."
Loreva and Larry reportedly were not sent a copy of the letter, or informed of its existence.
The ongoing lawsuit argues that Citizens Bank & Trust "inexplicably distributed $197,591 as an attorney fee to Wahlmeier, evidently without questioning its reasonableness or otherwise insisting upon any rationale or documentation justifying such an incredibly large fee."
Two weeks after distributing the funds to Wahlmeier's law firm, the lawsuit states that Citizens Bank & Trust took $26,483.50 out of the trust as its own "administration fee." The lawsuit states that this fee "was evidently for really doing nothing more than distributing a car to Loreva and improperly distributing $197,591.49 to Wahlmeier."
It wasn't until six days later that Loreva, Larry, Dylan, and Brian had their shares of the trust funds distributed.
A quote in the lawsuit reads, "Wahlmeier's conduct is precisely the type of greedy, self-serving behavior that gives lawyers a bad name and seriously injures the reputation of the legal profession in society at large."
Wahlmeier's attorney, M. Jered Medlock of Fort Smith, said he wasn’t interested in commenting, he told Arkansas Business. But in a March 30 filing in a probate proceeding that raised the allegations, Medlock wrote that Wahlmeier “Denies all allegations.”
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