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VeryHurt2010

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veryhurt2010

Junior Member
Need help

My father was diagnosed with cancer the same year my mother died, he met a woman about a year after he was diagnosed. He told us this woman needed help, she had been through a nasty divorce and her house was in forclosure. She moved in with him and they were married 6 months before he died. Before the marriage he told us he was marrying her so she would be able to recieve his pension and be able to live in his house after his death. He had a will drawn up stating exactly what he wanted. When my mother died a large sum of money was left to my father from her fathers estate, it was almost $200,000. This money was in my fathers checking account 45 days before he died. He added his new wife to the checking account 37 days before he passed away, he was so weak he could not right checks, his new wife told us that he could not even balance his checkbook anymore, he had previously refused to add her to the account. I feel at the time he added her he was not in a good mental state, nor was he in any physical state to even get himself to the bank to process this. After he passed away we started going thru the account online (he had left us all the passwords and account numbers) we were astonished to see that there had been 2 major withdrawls within the 3 weeks before his death, amounting to $150,000 gone from the account. We are now in the process of dealing with an attorney to get the money back, keep in mind the will SPECIFICALLY states that the money was to go to me and my brother with special alottments to our children. Her attorney is claiming that since she was on the account at the time of his death all of the money goes to her, also she does not know that we had access to the accounts and that we know about the withdrawls. Do you think we have a fighting chance to recover our inheritance?
 

anteater

Senior Member
You really should be questioning/listening to your attorney.

The legal presumption is that your father intended to do what he did and that the surviving spouse now owns the account through right of survivorship. You are challenging that presumption on the grounds that he was not competent to make that change and/or he only intended to add her for convenience purposes.

The evidence needed to win that challenge will be buried in Indiana case law and your attorney is best-suited to research and explain that.
 
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justalayman

Senior Member
before you get too deep in this financially, you also need to determine what she was entitled to under Indiana probate law if she decided to take her share against the will. You may find that it is not great enough to spend a lot of money in fighting this.

her attorney is correct if her placement on the account cannot be successfully challenged. That is not likely to be easy nor cheap. Again, consider the costs of litigation compared to the possible gain. It may not be worth it.
 

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