Ill. State Bar Ass’n Mut. Ins. Co. v. Leighton Legal Grp., LLC¸ 2018 IL App. (4th) 170548, arose from underlying litigation wherein the plaintiffs, beneficiaries of a trust, filed suit against the insured, an attorney and co-trustee for the trust. The complaint contained various causes of action relating to the insured’s creation of a second trust that allegedly deprived the plaintiffs of the benefits due to them through an original trust of which they were beneficiaries. In sum, the plaintiffs contended that the insured took the principal of the first trust to which the plaintiffs were beneficiaries and “poured” it into a second trust created by the attorney. Although the plaintiffs were also beneficiaries of the second trust, they alleged that it contained materially different terms and created a self-compensation scheme for the insured. To that point, the insured had appointed himself as a co-trustee under the second trust, eliminated the requirement to use a qualified financial institution as a co-trustee, and included a clause that invalidated a gift to a beneficiary that unsuccessfully challenged the validity of a testamentary document.
The underlying complaint filed by the plaintiffs was replete with allegations of...
