Fiduciary Forensics: Trust Accountings, Surcharge, and Elder Financial Exploitation
Matthew A. Bourque serves as Managing Partner of RMO LLP's Dallas and Houston offices. A thoughtful, diligent litigator, Matthew focuses his practice on representing heirs, beneficiaries, fiduciaries, creditors, and other interested parties in contested probate, trust, guardianship, and financial elder abuse cases. As supported by his accomplished track record, he is able to calmly and expertly handle the most tumultuous situations with relative ease while securing results for his clients that allow them to move past their dispute and on with their lives. Matthew primarily handles probate litigation matters including will contests, fiduciary litigation to recover misfunded, misapplied, or misappropriated estate and trust funds, community property claims, executor and trustee removal proceedings, compelled distribution of estate and trust assets, trust accounting lawsuits, competing applications for guardianship, and establishment of common-law marriage and adoption-by-estoppel. He also has significant experience handling commercial litigation incidental to probate matters.
2 hour CLE
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Program Summary
A fiduciary accounting that once cleared without challenge now draws an objection, a surcharge claim, and a forensic accountant pulling the trust apart line by line. Two of the most actively litigated fronts in trust and estate law are converging—the wave of surcharge claims following high-profile accounting disputes, and the surge in elder financial exploitation driven by an aging population and increasingly aggressive use of powers of attorney. Litigators, estate and trust attorneys, and elder law practitioners are on the hook in any jurisdiction, and an outdated read of an exculpatory clause or a no-contest provision can collapse a client's position fast. This program delivers the full dispute cycle—objection mechanics, burden-of-proof and burden-shifting analyses, the prudent investor surcharge, forensic financial evidence, and state statutory models across California, Texas, Florida, and Nebraska—grounded in recent appellate decisions rather than theory. You will leave able to challenge or defend an accounting at every procedural stage, calculate surcharge damages, and build or dismantle an exploitation claim.
What Will You Learn
Attorneys will learn to challenge or defend an accounting at each procedural stage, identify the strongest grounds for surcharge, and prove or defend exploitation claims.
What Will You Gain
They gain concrete tools, exculpatory clauses and no-contest frameworks, burden-shifting analyses, and strategies for coordinating civil litigation with parallel criminal or regulatory proceedings—applicable immediately in active matters.
Key topics to be discussed:
- Surcharge remedy
Damages theories and recent case law reshaping the ceiling and floor of liability. - Procedural requirements
Service, standing, burden of proof, and statutes of limitations governing accounting objections. - Exculpatory clauses
Consent defenses and jurisdictional variation affecting the risk-reward calculus of filing objections. - Prudent investor
Investment-based surcharge, forensic accounting, and application of the prudent investor standard. - Undue influence
Doctrinal frameworks, the burden-shifting presumption, and their limits under emerging scholarship. - Power abuse
Power of attorney abuse as the dominant exploitation vehicle, proven through forensic evidence.
This course is co-sponsored with myLawCLE.
Date / Time: July 31, 2026
- 1:00 pm – 3:10 pm Eastern
- 12:00 pm – 2:10 pm Central
- 11:00 am – 1:10 pm Mountain
- 10:00 am – 12:10 pm Pacific
Closed-captioning available
Speakers
Matthew A. Bourque, Managing Partner | RMO,LLP
Matthew A. Bourque serves as Managing Partner of RMO LLP’s Dallas and Houston offices. A thoughtful, diligent litigator, Matthew focuses his practice on representing heirs, beneficiaries, fiduciaries, creditors, and other interested parties in contested probate, trust, guardianship, and financial elder abuse cases. As supported by his accomplished track record, he is able to calmly and expertly handle the most tumultuous situations with relative ease while securing results for his clients that allow them to move past their dispute and on with their lives. Matthew primarily handles probate litigation matters including will contests, fiduciary litigation to recover misfunded, misapplied, or misappropriated estate and trust funds, community property claims, executor and trustee removal proceedings, compelled distribution of estate and trust assets, trust accounting lawsuits, competing applications for guardianship, and establishment of common-law marriage and adoption-by-estoppel. He also has significant experience handling commercial litigation incidental to probate matters.
- Education & Credentials
Matthew received his Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law, with a concentration in litigation and dispute resolution. He graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University, where he majored in Political Science with a minor in Spanish. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas and is admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
- Recognition & Leadership
Matthew has been recognized as a Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch honoree in Trusts and Estates Litigation for 2025–2026, and was named to the Lawdragon 500 X – The Next Generation list in 2025. He was elevated to Managing Partner of RMO LLP’s Dallas and Houston offices, and has been featured as an interviewee on KHOU 11’s VERIFY segment and KERA News.
- Professional Involvement
Matthew serves as a Board Member of the Probate Section of the Collin County Bar Association and as a Branch Committee Member of STEP Texas. He is a member of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners, the Trusts and Estates Section of the Dallas Bar Association, the Dallas Estate Planning Council, and the Independent Trustee Alliance, and serves as an Executive Committee Member of ProVisors.
- Experience
Matthew’s representative matters reflect the full range of contested trust, estate, and guardianship disputes. He prevailed at trial for clients whose stepmother procured an invalid will from their dementia-stricken father, securing findings of bad faith that prevented her from recovering attorney’s fees from the estate. He obtained an emergency guardianship order for a client whose brother planned to relocate their incapacitated father to an unsafe environment, removed an executor who stole several hundred thousand dollars in estate funds while preserving the remainder for national charity clients, and secured injunctive relief requiring the return of $2,000,000 in unlawfully distributed estate funds. He has defended an elderly client against a guardianship proceeding orchestrated by her son-in-law, protected a client’s six-figure inheritance against contesting relatives, exonerated a trustee falsely accused of mismanagement, and won a judgment invalidating a ladybird deed to restore a widower’s homestead rights. His appellate work includes Williams v. Tanner (Tex. App.—Dallas 2023), Golfis v. Houillion (Tex. App.—Dallas 2016 and 2014), Transitional Entity, LP v. Elder Care, LP (Tex. App.—Dallas 2016), and Sherrill v. Williams (Tex. App.—Dallas 2015).
Agenda
SESSION 1 – Challenging and Defending Trust and Estate Accountings in Surcharge | 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Covers the full litigation lifecycle—objection mechanics, burden-of-proof rules, damages calculation, exculpatory clause analysis, and the prudent investor surcharge.
BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm
SESSION 2 – Proving Financial Exploitation and Undue Influence of Elder Clients | 2:10pm – 3:10pm
Equips attorneys with legal frameworks, evidentiary tools, and statutory remedies, including the burden-shifting presumption, power of attorney abuse, and forensic financial evidence.
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