What is the value of the estate being probated in court or have you checked yet? Your attorney would need to find out the estate value before he can decide whether there is enough money in it to file a claim for your college expenses.
Your attorney needs to figure out what has actually happened with the beneficiary designation on each of the other assets (life insurance, mutual fund, and 401K savings) before you can decide whether a lawsuit is needed or not. Each asset has its own rules and regulations about who gets what and that may be different what the law states but the beneficiary designations rule--what they state is what will happen. Your attorney needs to find out if the beneficiary designations were what your father filled out at the time the asset was purchased, or whether he later changed it or whether the widow had previously gotten power of attorney and whether SHE actually submitted the beneficiary designation changes. If SHE did it that might be considered abuse of POA depending on whether this state has laws against that or not, and if that is what happened she will have to pay that money back. Normally the executor of the estate investigates all of this, but in this case it looks like the executor might not give you that information if he is sympathetic to the widow.
Each account has rules and regulations that sometimes favor the surviving spouse, but others favor the kids so you just need to look at the rules for each asset account to find out what happened and exactly who gets what.
If this attorney took over a month and a half to meet with you, then he is too busy to take your case. You need to be talking to another attorney who can help you now before it is too late. If this attorney has another lawyer in his firm that can handle this for you, use the other attorney and only go back to the first one if you need to actually sue.
If you have not done so already, you need to check at the county courthouse probate court to see if anyone has filed to become executor of this estate--there could be an updated will that you don't know about. If there is no will filed, then your attorney needs to get the original will filed so that if there is any other estate besides the life insurance/401k/mutual fund, whoever is named beneficiary in the will gets paid (are the children named as beneficiaries?).
Hope this has a good outcome for the kids--it is despicable what your father did--he could have least left one of the accounts for them!!
DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA (
[email protected])