<prompt> Human: Location: Las Vegas, NV This is an update to the posts I made here: PF discussions: We ended up settling before going to court. Im under a NDA and a non-disparagement as apart of the settlement so I cannot disclose the exact amounts or who the brokerage was, but I am allowed to talk generalities about the case and I can say that the final payout to me was above 500k. Ive cleared this post with my lawyer after being really careful knowing that people who have talked about settlements have lost such settlements. The brokerage fought tooth nail on absolutely everything about the claim. They tried their hardest to have it go to binding arbitration with FIRNA. They tried claiming the individual account I created to received the TOD bounded the estate to arbitration. They also tried claiming that my dad had agreed to arbitration through a click through agreement, even though they didnt have any signatures of him agreeing to arbitration. It turns out he created the account with the brokerage in 1985 and they didnt require arbitration then. The 1987 Supreme Court case Shearson v. McMahon was making it unclear if arbitration would apply, and for good reason my lawyer was trying to avoid arbitration with FIRNA. I was able to pull out the original transfer on death form my dad submitted to the brokerage. In the contract it clearly states that they had to liquidate any leveraged position, options position, any position on margin, and any position that is unsuitable for the beneficiary. So this shows a clear fiduciary duty to the beneficiary. Thank you Dad for keeping good records! Not to excuse them, but their reasoning for not liquidating it was since the TOD was so old the account wasnt marked as a TOD account in their computer systems. They were searching for it and werent aware of their obligations. No one actually bothered to look into the account to see it had risky speculative bets. They were holding the positions as-is and was only going to let the account go to the estate. Things may have turned out differently if I didnt find the TOD form. Since Dads other stock buys like in Rite-Aid tanked we decided to ask for the cash value on the day the broker was notified punitive damages acting in bad faith other securities violations. I ended up paying my lawyers on contingency and Im glad I did that instead of hourly. I had both an estate lawyer who hired out a securities lawyer. It aligned both of their interests and with the brokerage fighting on every single point it worked out to about 1,000 total billable hours for them associatesparalegals, a forensic accountant, a CPA, etc. Ultimately it came down to days before our court date the brokerage didnt want to get bad publicity over it. Im sure they were paying a fortune in lawyers too. I feel the settlement is fair and puts me more than whole. I didnt want to risk a judge ruling against me or ruling that we had to arbitrate, and likewise the brokerage didnt want to risk setting precedence in a court diminishing enforcement of arbitration clauses. One thing I learned about selecting a lawyer is you dont just want someone who knows the law, you want someone who is a damn good negotiator and who is very hungry. I think he was a bit let down when I accepted the settlement though, as I think he was gearing up for a case that would make his career if we were able to set new precedence. I was just exhausted with the case and just wanted it to be over.  <response>: Wow. Sorry you had to go through this, but it sounds like things worked out well in the end and it was a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing! 