Schooler brothers' sister disbarred for mishandling family estate

The late Louis Schooler and his brother John Schooler took a lot of investors to the cleaners, as the Reader has been reporting for seven years.

Now their sister is in trouble:

Jane L. Schooler has been disbarred for mishandling the family estate. She was appointed trustee of the family estate and personal representative of her mother's estate, which in 2007 was combined worth more than $7 million, according to the California State Bar. She told her brother and tenants to move out of the family home so she could oversee repairs and sell it. But she didn't sell it, rejecting offers, and living in it for two years, using money from the family trust. She failed to pay some taxes.

Despite repeated requests from her siblings, including Louis and John, she did not distribute assets to the beneficiaries for nearly eight years. She was removed as trustee and executor and a successor was named. By then, the trust holdings had dwindled considerably. She continued to hold herself out as trustee and personal representative. In November of 2013, the Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District ruled that "this appeal has no merit whatsoever."

In 2011, the probate court had ruled "this is a totally dysfunctional family."

John and Louis were at the top of interlocking financial holdings. John ran a brokerage house, WFP Securities. In 2013, the then-defunct brokerage was ordered by an arbitration panel to pay $19 million to investors who had lost money in a Ponzi scheme pushed by WFP.

Louis ran a real estate operation. The Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it bought undeveloped land and sold it at grossly inflated prices to investors. Early last year, the securities agency ordered him to disgorge almost $150 million. He went on a 3500-mile sailboat journey to the South Pacific and disappeared. He is assumed deceased.