► Judge Margarita Lopez Torres of Brooklyn; one of the Good Gals |
Judge Margarita Lopez Torres of Brooklyn; one of the Good Gals
Judge Torres received her law license from the State of New York in 1981 after graduating from Rutgers University School of Law.
Judge Margarita Lopez Torres sits on the New York Surrogates Court in Brooklyn. Surrogates Court is the same thing as a Probate Court in other states. They both oversee the distribution of the assets of decedents to their designated heirs.
It should be noted that in many instances, these types of courts are manned by unethical judges who offer valuable services to greedy and dishonest attorneys in “stealing from the dead.” In many jurisdictions, ripping off the dead are unfortunately an “Olympian Sport.”
Judge Torres presided over the case of 83-year-old Faye Mancuso. Two days before Ms. Mancuso died she signed a new will disinheriting her family and named Michael Pizzi, a man she hardly knew as the sole beneficiary of her $1.7 million estate.
Subsequently, a jury tossed out the new will based on Mr. Pizzi’s misconduct. Pizzi then had the gall to demands $32,283 in fees he claimed he earned as preliminary executor for Ms. Mancuso’s estate. In addition, Pizzi’s so-called attorney filed an application for $136,618 in fees for representing Pizzi’s sham claim as the sole heir to Ms. Mancuso’s estate.
When confronted with these sham claims, Judge Torres denied Pizzi’s claim for $32,283 and reduced his attorney’s unconscionable claim for fees to a flat sum of $10,000.
Judge Torres concluded that actual justice precluded either Pizzi or his unethical attorney from benefiting from their own wrongdoing. She went on to specifically rule:
How cool would it be if Judge Torres was put in charge of ridding the Surrogate Court’s in New York of the unethical elves running amuck?
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