"Maybe I should call the E*Trade Baby. He might give me better customer service." Matt's mother died last year and he has been trying since last year to liquidate her E*Trade CD and put it in the family trust. Every other financial institution has been able to liquidate the assets with no problem, but it seems after blowing their wad on funny Superbowl ads, E*Trade has nothing left over for customer service. Here's Matt's story, and our advice on how can get his problem fixed: Joe writes: I lost my mother in April of 2007, and was appointed as co-trustee to her Estate. My brother was the other co-trustee. Problem was, he shipped out to Iraq the very same day she passed. While he was able to return for emergency family leave for several days, he had to return to his Army unit south of Baghdad after we held a memorial service. So, for all intents and purposes, I was the sole trustee since he couldn’t effectively do much to help me from a war zone. My father had passed the year previous, so I’d already gained some valuable experience and had become somewhat of a hobby-level forensic accountant. My mom was not much of a communicator, and she held most of her financial doings close to the vest, even in her final weeks. After she passed, I had to go through boxes of documents to determine what holdings she had, tally them up, then develop an action plan to convert them all into one large Trust account that I was establishing with another ...
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