Flags

(1) Have you been led to accept a policy of secrecy between you and other members of your family? If so, are those other members members that you currently trust with the family's assets and have or will have control of those assets?

(2) Have the accountants led you to believe that your established advisors and fiduciaries should be removed? That your existing attorneys should not be paid in full for their services? If you do not pay them in full it guarantees that your relationship with them will terminate.

(3) Did the accountants supplant the family's established advisors and fiduciaries? Are the accountants now in control of your assets?

1988.09.06 (Jean O'Connell to Anthony O'Connell, in part)
"I also would like you to be at least courteous to my friends. They know you do not want them around so you may not see much of them. They are people who helped me when I was desperately in need of help and had no place to turn.  Joanne especially was helpful.  When Ed Prichard was going to charge me ¼ of your Dad's estate for his fee and Shalloway had a mental break down when he was going to work on the estate it was Joanne who helped me by explaining what I had to do.  She did not want to be a co-trustee but I begged her and she agreed reluctantly tho she had never done it for anyone else. I still think you owe her an apology and a box of candy or bouquet of flowers."

(4) Have you been given instructions that can not be traced back to the source; instructions by telephone or in person, rather than by letter?

(5) Has your family experienced trauma after those instructions were carried out; has the relationship with members of your family been broken? Do you not trust members of your family that you had previously trusted?

(6) Do the accountant's avoid accountability?

(7) What would you expect the response from the accountants to be if you wanted to drop the policy of secrecy and/ or find out where the money went?

(8) Are there things that don't make sense but you assume it is because you don't understand accounting or court procedures? Such as Edward White speaking for Joanne Barnes; or Edward White not wanting you to identify him by name, or of his existence to other members of your family? Do the accountants want their instructions to kept secrect?

1985.05.30 (Jean OConnell to Commissioner of Accounts)
"May 30, 1985
Commissioner's Office of Accts.
Fairfax, Va.
Dear Sir,
Re: Estate of Harold A. OConnell
In answer to your letter of May 8th regarding progress in establishing a trust required by the will with Anthony M. OConnell as trustee I would like to report that a co-trustee has agreed to serve with him.  She is:  Ms Jo Ann Barnes (Home address 7225 Pine Drive, Annandale, Va. 22003 Tel 354-0673.  Office phone 549-7800.)  She will be working on this soon with a lawyer.  
I had hoped that the procedure of setting up a trust could be simplified by putting title to the "Residuary Estate" (my home) in the names of my three children as listed in the will to receive it.
There should be more definite progress soon and I will inform your office then.
Very truly yours
Jean M. OConnell, Exrx"

(9) Have you been led to believe that you have done something wrong and that the accountants are trying to protect you from the IRS, etc., so you must do as they say, such as keep their accounting secrect?

(10) Is your family being rendered powerless, and you don't realize it, and they are using you to do it?

(11) Are accountant approved members of your family now in control of family assets? Would those accountant approved family members be aware of things such as (a) accounting entanglements, (b) the accounting behind Bk467p191 remains impentrable after nineteen years despite numerous procedural approvals, (c) Joanne Barnes did the accounting for the trust for 1991, the trustee is blamed for it, and the trustee does not have the power to get it corrected?, (d) it is still not recognized that Edward White prepared the 1988 deed? (e) the accountants make money dissappear by using trusting family members to carry out their instructions?