Will or No Will

[onetwo]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? Indiana

I am concerned about whether a Will exists or not. My husband's father died in Indiana in September 2004. My deceased husband's two sisters and one brother have filed paperwork to open an estate for their father. My children should be entitled to their father's part in this matter. My husband's siblings claimed that there was No Will. They also said that they were the only heirs to their father's estate. Their father had about $70,000 in the bank and a worn out house worth about $50,000. When I asked their lawyer to include my children in this estate, he promptly told me that there was indeed a Will. I sent their lawyer several certified letters requesting a copy of the Will. I never received a copy of the Will from him. I checked the Probate office on Friday, April 29, 2005, and found that no Will had been filed as yet. Why would someone say a Will existed if one did not? Is it illegal for an attorney to withhold the filing of a Will? Isn't there a time frame for filing a Will?

 

[BelizeBreeze]

First of all you don't have to depend on the uncles and aunts or the attorney to provide a will. Call the County where the grandfather died and ask to speak with the Recorder's Office or call the county courthouse and ask to speak with the Probate clerk.

Either of these places will have a copy of any will should one exist and if Probate has been opened.

If probate has been opened and there was no will, then it will be an intestate probate, which simply means 'without a will'.

If there is no valid will then your children will stand to inherit, under Indiana's intestate succession statutes (Indiana Code 29-1-2 ), their father's share of the estate had he lived.

Also, under IC 29-1-7-3, you can petition the court to demand the executor produce the will if none exists. Let them explain it to the Judge.

Another point of law is expressedly disinheriting your (I assume) deceased husband. Unless the father's will (if it exists) expressedly disinherits him, his children will stand in succession to the other, non-disinherited heirs.

The Indiana court in Lindsey v. Burkemper, 107 S.W.3d 354 (Mo. Ct. App. 2003), held that the disinheritance clause did not override the anti-lapse statute and that the nephew's descendants took under the anti-lapse statute.