Q: Do I have rights to my deceased father’s estate after his second wife remarried soon after his death?
My father married my stepmother in 1987. He passed in 2011 while they were still married. My stepmother ended up selling the home that she and my father lived in before his death to her daughter (my step sister). My stepsister, in turn, sold the home a few years later for a nice profit. My stepmother remarried a little over a year after my father’s death and none of my blood siblings have heard from her since. Is his estate gone? Do we have any rights to it?
A: Yes, by all realistic scenarios, there is no inheritable estate left, assuming the absence of fraud. Your stepmother could not have sold the house and transferred title to her daughter without having sole title herself, either as joint tenant with right of survivorship on the deed, or by a will signed by your father leaving everything he owned to your stepmother. You can look to see whether there was an estate opened for your father, and review any will or accounting of assets filed in the matter. An estate is opened in the jurisdiction where your father resided at the time of his death. Once an estate is closed, all further claims are generally extinguished after 18 months have passed. The sole exception would be fraud. You also will have a hard time getting around waiting this long after his death to begin looking into the matter. Even if you can establish fraud, if you waited this long and "sat on your rights", a court may find you have missed the filing deadline to bring an action within 3 years of when you knew or should have known about the fraud.
Justia Ask a Lawyer is a forum for consumers to get answers to basic legal questions. Any information sent through Justia Ask a Lawyer is not secure and is done so on a non-confidential basis only.
The use of this website to ask questions or receive answers does not create an attorney–client relationship between you and Justia, or between you and any attorney who receives your information or responds to your questions, nor is it intended to create such a relationship. Additionally, no responses on this forum constitute legal advice, which must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each case. You should not act upon information provided in Justia Ask a Lawyer without seeking professional counsel from an attorney admitted or authorized to practice in your jurisdiction. Justia assumes no responsibility to any person who relies on information contained on or received through this site and disclaims all liability in respect to such information.
Justia cannot guarantee that the information on this website (including any legal information provided by an attorney through this service) is accurate, complete, or up-to-date. While we intend to make every attempt to keep the information on this site current, the owners of and contributors to this site make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information contained in or linked to from this site.
