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expenses. The estate’s argument is unavailing. When RLP was
formed, decedent and her sons knew that decedent’s annual income
from Trust B, which for 1998 was $44,481, would be insufficient
to cover decedent’s annual expenses of approximately three times
as much. Decedent had just become a full-time resident at the
Hospital, where her residence resulted in medical costs totaling
$71,788 for 1999, $78,114 for 2000, and $94,822 for 2001.
Decedent and John Rector also directly drew over $77,000 in funds
from RLP during 1999 to pay decedent’s personal expenses. The
estate attempts to downplay the significance of the direct use of
RLP funds to pay decedent’s personal expenses by attributing that
use to “errors”. In the light of John Rector’s extensive
financial expertise and his testimony that it never occurred to
him that RLP should be reimbursed for such “errors” after they
were discovered, we find that this argument lacks credibility.
We also note that the Trust B agreement allowed the
cotrustees to pay to decedent amounts of trust principal
necessary for her “care and comfortable support in * * * her
accustomed manner of living”. The implied understanding among
decedent and her sons was that the assets of RLP would be readily
used to meet decedent’s expenses and that the corpus of Trust B
would not be invaded. We conclude that the principal of Trust B
was not available in any significant sense to decedent to pay her
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