Father's Estate

My father died when I was 16. He was a resident of Rhode Island along with his second wife. I am now 26. In his will, everything he owned, including all assets, went to my stepmother. Since his death, my stepmother has not been in my life nor the lives of my siblings and she tried to auction off letters addressed to my grandmother by Jackie Kennedy. (However, we pressured her not to.) But that was about 6 years ago. By now, she may have sold them. My stepmother did not pay child support after my father's death and although my father helped put my siblings through college, my stepmother has not used any of his money to help me out. I am now faced with a college loan of 22,000 dollars to pay off and I am barely able to make my payments. If a lump sum of say 5000 dollars is payed to Sallie Mae Loan Servicing, it could knock enough money off of the loan principal to lower my monthly payments. Do I have any legal right to demand that my stepmother help me with the college loans? She is a chain smoker, fifty-something, and will probably die soon of lung cancer. However, I doubt any of us are in her will.

Worried in Massachusetts.

Sorry. It was his property and he could leave it all to whoever he wanted. And now it is hers and she can leave it to whoever she wants; and even as a normal heavy smoking 50+ she has a normal life expectancy of 20-35 years.

Unless she adopted you she does not owe you any duty of support or even the right time.

Your father could have made other choices, and I am sorry for your sake that he didn't. You're on your own.