Q: My mother passed away and left a will. My nephew was appointed the PR and opened probate. The will was accepted into

A: This can't be answered on a website. Your brother, the PR needs to get legal advice and if the probate Attorney he hired doesn't know anything about family law then another Attorney familiar with family law needs to be consulted. The problem here is you are calling the document a prenup and prenups are normally understood to deal with divorce situations. However in Oregon there is such a thing as a contract to make a Will and generally there are principles of contracts which may come into play. So an Attorney needs to evaluate if what went on between your mother and your step father was a contract to do something to protect your stepfather in the event of your mother's death as opposed to a document solely intended to deal with contingent situation, a divorce, which contingency didn't happen.

Second there is the question of whether the probate was done correctly and people with claims were timely notified such that their claims would be cut off if they didn't file an objection.

Third is the question as to whether your stepfather's claim is the type of claim that can be cut of by a notice in probate. If a property right is vested, it exists whether or not someone files an objection in probate to assert that right. You can't change someone right to property which is vested by a probate proceeding. For example, if your mother's house was encumbered by a properly recorded mortgage which had not yet been paid off, all the probate notices in the world can't undo the fact that there is a secured creditor with a valid lien against the house. This is probably a unique situation and the answer will require legal research to determine what type of property right your stepfather has and whether it has been cut off.

A: PS The four months you are referring to is the publication of general notice in a newspaper, usually the Daily Journal of Commerce, which no one reads. This may not be effective to cut of a claimant that the PR had an affirmative duty to search for and discover and notify directly. Remember that the PR has duty to perform a diligent search for creditors and publishing a notice is not enough for a diligent search.