Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Georgia
What rights do we have...
I'll try to keep this short. Father passed in February with a will dated in 2001 with son as executor. He married mid 2003. The will was initially thought to be invalid due to the marriage but was later found to still be valid. A tentative agreement was set up with father's verbal wishes in mind to combine monetray assets, pay off the house and give the house to the new wife. Whatever is left is split between her and the siblings. We are more concerned about personal items that we know the father wanted us to have, generally things from his previous marriage of 26 years (mother's (who passed in '91)) and other items like clothes, gun collection, certain tools, family pictures and heirlooms and other miscellaneous items (nothing jointly owned with current wife or any furniture). The wife has changed locks and updated/refurbished the security system. She has also signed over dad's car to herself and signed another vehicle to a sibling(Not a problem)Our concern is before we sign the deed over to her, what recourse would we have if she refused to give up these items? FYI - The will stated that the estate should be split up between the three siblings, but verbally told us the instructions above. We are not going through probate.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: What rights do we have...
It would be much cleaner I think if you went through probate. It's not that expensive. You could then draw up an agreement and do everything at once. It seems like you're working together, but its always better to do things as the testator intended. One thing you should have done is a very detailed inventory of all the property immediately following your fathers death, within a month. Does the new wife still have all the property? There is no way to know that, and it is now her word against yours. So, to try to clean it up, first get an inventory, then make a written agreement, then sign all the papers and distribute the property. Have everyone sign, with notary and witness, that the Will is not being probated and they are in agreement with the distribution. Then file the appropriate documents in the real estate records so there's not a problem when the house is sold later. If she won't sign, then you need to probate the Will so you can get an impartial Judge to make some rulings.
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