What is the name of your state? Massachusetts
My brother is the Administrator of my Mother's estate. She died 9/1999 and there was no will. We had a pre-trial on Dec. 1st, 2004 and the judge ordered the Administrator to pay the heirs their settlement proceeds within 90 days, by March 1st. On March 3rd, his lawyer mailed out letters, and the heirs received notices of the certified letters on March 5th. The lawyer had sent Treasurers Checks made payable to the Administrator, and endorsed by the Administrator. Our banks will not cash the checks because they are of course not made payable to the heirs. He was also court ordered to include a statement releasing the heirs from any further asset claims and fees. We still have not receive this statement.
We have filled out contempt forms. We know our brother did this on purpose to delay paying the heirs, he has handled the estate for the last 3.5 years in this same deceitful manner, which has cause a small estate to take forever to settle. During the past 3.5 years he has been attempting to obtain all the property of her estate for $10.00, but he lost in court.
We contacted his lawyer and he said that he told his client to get certified checks made payable to each of the heirs, and that his client showed up with the Treasurers checks instead. That he felt there should be no problem with us cashing them, then he hung up on us. He has avoided our questions about the release statement we should have received.
We had a lawyer for the first 2.5 years of this, but we were getting financially drained without any type of outcome except things dragging on and on. We represented ourselves at the pre-trial (by phone conference) and won a settlement. The judge had to stop the court proceedings 5 times because of my brother's outbursts.
I have a few questions:
1) Should we send the checks back to the lawyer or to the court?
2) Will we be required to appear in court for the contempt charges? Two of us live in Colorado and one lives in North Carolina, and the time and expense of this would be such a hardship.
3) Any other advice to help solve this?
We just want all this settled fairly without my brother's games.
My brother is the Administrator of my Mother's estate. She died 9/1999 and there was no will. We had a pre-trial on Dec. 1st, 2004 and the judge ordered the Administrator to pay the heirs their settlement proceeds within 90 days, by March 1st. On March 3rd, his lawyer mailed out letters, and the heirs received notices of the certified letters on March 5th. The lawyer had sent Treasurers Checks made payable to the Administrator, and endorsed by the Administrator. Our banks will not cash the checks because they are of course not made payable to the heirs. He was also court ordered to include a statement releasing the heirs from any further asset claims and fees. We still have not receive this statement.
We have filled out contempt forms. We know our brother did this on purpose to delay paying the heirs, he has handled the estate for the last 3.5 years in this same deceitful manner, which has cause a small estate to take forever to settle. During the past 3.5 years he has been attempting to obtain all the property of her estate for $10.00, but he lost in court.
We contacted his lawyer and he said that he told his client to get certified checks made payable to each of the heirs, and that his client showed up with the Treasurers checks instead. That he felt there should be no problem with us cashing them, then he hung up on us. He has avoided our questions about the release statement we should have received.
We had a lawyer for the first 2.5 years of this, but we were getting financially drained without any type of outcome except things dragging on and on. We represented ourselves at the pre-trial (by phone conference) and won a settlement. The judge had to stop the court proceedings 5 times because of my brother's outbursts.
I have a few questions:
1) Should we send the checks back to the lawyer or to the court?
2) Will we be required to appear in court for the contempt charges? Two of us live in Colorado and one lives in North Carolina, and the time and expense of this would be such a hardship.
3) Any other advice to help solve this?
We just want all this settled fairly without my brother's games.