curious, and broke

[thanatos]

I'm curious about a situation in our family. My grandparents, many years ago, bought about 15 miles of beachfront property in Florida. Through a lot of hard work and personal physical labor, they developed the land into a nice tract. They eventually sold it for quite a nice sum (as you can imagine). They both passed away about 10 years ago, dividing their estate between their four sons, one of whom was my father. My father died last year. His will put everything in a trust for my stepmother. While our relationship with our stepmother is cordial, it's not what you would call close. My biological mother was due an amount from the divorce settlement, but had to go to Probate to get it. My stepmother is playing everything very close to the chest because she does not want to disclose how much is in the trust. She just gave the amount to my mother (who she hates) without contest so she wouldn't have to disclose. The concern of my siblings and I are that when our stepmother passes away, she will leave everything to her biological children and leave us out. This may all sound very mercenary, and if we get zero I'm sure our lives will continue, but it does irk us that the children of the woman who helped break up our family may get all of what our grandparents (who we were VERY close to) worked for. Would there be grounds to contest a will that did something like that, or are we plain out of luck? Thanks for any input.

 

[ALawyer]

If the assets are in a trust the trust may also speciffy who gets it after she goes , or empower her to name beneficiaries or spend it all -- but as folks can live a long time you may be dead and long gone by the time you'd inherit. You'd have consult with a lawyer about your POSSIBLE rights as a trust remainderman to learn what is involved and how to go about it.