How To Probate a Will When There Are No Blood Relatives

If you have been named as executor in someone's Will, and there are no living blood relatives, and you're not blood related either, this story may help you understand what you are about to experience.

When there are no known living blood relatives the court may deny probate, even when there is a Will.

Being named as executor in a Last Will and Testament is not valid until the probate court actually appoints you as executor.

If you are not blood related, you will not even be able to take care of money matters after death, until the probate court approves. There are situations were the court might not approve estate distribution.

The following true story may help guide you if you're in a similar predicament.

My sister and I are only related to our deceased Aunt by marriage. So the New York Surrogate's Court, the Public Administrator, and the Attorney General had to get involved. I never knew how difficult it can be with getting probate approval in this case.

What's the reason for this? The courts want to protect anyone who is blood related but is not included to receive an inheritance. By law blood related relatives who are not receiving an inheritance need to be given a chance to dispute the Will.

But what if they don't exist? The court doesn't know that. And it gets costly when blood related relatives are no longer alive because they were killed in the holocaust! We have to prove it but many times there is no proof of death because all papers were confiscated or destroyed.

You might ask, “Wouldn’t the court expect that they are dead already since my Aunt herself was 98 when she died?” Well, I asked that same question. Their thinking is that those relatives may have had children and the children are also blood related. They need to be found and given a chance to dispute the Will.

I know they don’t exist. I know this because my Aunt and Uncle decided not to have kids. They had a desire to travel all around the world and having children would have delayed that some 20 year or so. As for siblings, my Aunt’s only sister married a man who was killed by the Nazi’s before they could have had any children.

So, “pretty simple” you say.

WRONG!!! The courts want proof. I have no proof. There was no death certificate to prove her sister's husband's death. The court did not accept my story so easily. I am told that too many people took advantage of the holocaust to game the system.

So, there was a huge cost involved locating people who don’t exist. The court wants me to show that I did my due diligence to find these people. Until then they do not allow me to act as executor of the Will and they do not allow any inheritance to be distributed. And no property can be sold to convert to cash either. Everything is frozen.

I asked my attorney if it is possible that the court never approves the Will. He said he has seen a case where that had happened. And the state takes all the money.

Why couldn’t I just take the money out of her account before the bank found out? That’s what many people do. I'm not saying it's legal. But it's not stealing either if the funds are distributed according to the Will. Then there would be more money to pass around as well, without any courts or lawyers getting involved and taking their share. Not to mention the cost of genealogy searches and advertising for blood relatives to come forward, as requested by the court.

Yes, that would have avoided the nightmare and her intentions would have been met as per her expectations! But there are cases were one can't just do that. I quickly ran into a brick wall, as I'll explain...

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Sometimes having a Last Will and Testament isn't sufficient to immediately take care of the wishes of the deceased. In our case we ran into a big snag. She had a co-op with a sizable mortgage. We needed to sell it quick to avoid further payments.

That mortgage helped her live in her apartment and pay for full-time elder care aides for many years. But the attorney she trusted to write her Will had left that co-op unresolved. The co-op board would not let me sell it without court approval.

When you make your will, you need to take potential obstacles into consideration. A good lawyer should know how to make a will.

I am not an attorney, but I am sure her lawyer could have put her co-op in a revocable trust with beneficiaries named in the trust. Revocable means that she has control over the property in the trust as long as she is alive. But then it goes to the beneficiaries without going through probate. Co-ops have to approve that, but her attorney never even suggested it to her.

It’s easier with a condo or a house. No board, or anyone, is going to deny someone the right to set up this kind of protection. The problem with a co-op is that one does not own real estate, they only own shares in the property.

Even if her co-op board refused to allow a trust, I am sure her attorney could have protected her in some way. After all, he was also Jewish and should have known the issues I just explained about the Nazi's confiscating papers. The attorney I hired knew of the problem right away. He has seen it before.

Yes. I hired another attorney as soon as I discovered that the co-op board would not let me sell her co-op without court approval. They need to protect the value of the apartment. They don’t want to take a chance that someone who might contest the Will would come forth later after someone else buys the apartment. That’s why they want a court to oversee everything.

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So I couldn’t just take the cash out from her bank, sell the apartment, pay off the mortgage and disburse payments to her bequeaths as she had intended.

Instead, I had to hire an attorney to get court permission to let me do all these things. The big bucks start disappearing, eroding what’s left after a long life to the wonderful age of 98.

The attorney I hired was an estate attorney with a specialty in New York probate. The attorney who wrote my Aunt’s Will was only a family attorney. Lesson learned.

My attorney had to present our case to the court for three reasons...

1. The court had to give me permission to sell the co-op.
2. The court had to assign me as executor (even though the Will indicated that).
3. The court had to approve probate

In New York, the New York Surrogate's Court handles these affairs.

The court assigned the NY County Public Administrator and the NYS Attorney General as Guardians to look over everything I do. Each one gets their cut after all is said and done.

By the way, even though the Will says I am to be the executor, I am not until the court says I am.

One of the first things my attorney did was go to court to convince them to give a temporary order to allow me to sell the co-op so we can pay off the bank. After a few court sessions he won that approval. But it was limited to selling the co-op and paying only the bank. Not anyone else yet.

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I soon found out that since I was not blood related the court would not grant the rights so easily. This was a time consuming affair, with repeated requests from the court for me to do research and provide additional information.

With each request my attorney guided me with how to respond to the court.

I had to show the New York Surrogate's Court that I did my due diligence in finding any existing blood relatives by searching her genealogy.

I traced her family tree via ancestry.com, a family history resource site. This returned no results. My lawyer said, “That’s what we want! We can show the court that nothing came up in my search.”

That didn’t satisfy the court however. They wanted proof that my Aunt’s sister is no longer alive. That was easy. My Aunt had saved her death certificate.

But then they wanted proof that her sister didn’t have any children who might contest the Will. She had married a man who was killed in the holocaust before they had a chance to have children. The Nazis destroyed those records.

With the advice of the Austrian Consulate, I searched the Austrian National Library and Austrian State Archives. No other siblings or offspring were found and I kept records of all my work to show the court.

Okay, even that was not enough. The court requested that we advertise in specific publications that they requested, asking anyone who might be a blood relative to make themselves known. The court requested that we had to wait several weeks for anyone to respond. So everything was on hold until then.

After all that time the court decided that they wanted to subpoena the attorney who wrote the Will to interview him. They wanted to be sure the witnesses he used actually saw her signing the Will and that they could testify to the fact that my Aunt was in sound mind.

Month after month went by with more requests and more delays.

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Finally after nine months the New York Surrogate's Court finally approved my Aunt’s Will for probate and I received the letter of testamentary. That means that as of that date the court has appointed me as the executor of the estate.

I was instructed that I could write checks to my Aunt's friends to whom she had left specified amounts. But some were listed with percentages, which could not be calculated until all final bills were received.

I could see that there was some logic behind using percentage amounts for some. Even without all the final bills I already I could see that those amounts were in the same ballpark as the specific amounts that were left to others. I understand this is customary practice since there is no way to know exactly how much would be left to divide up. I guess her attorney must have guided her with that.

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Some of those who were listed with percentages and who expected money immediately will be disappointed.

One of them didn’t understand why she had to wait and she even hired an attorney. I was instructed that I should not even consider offering to pay this person out of my own money as the courts may not allow me to reimburse myself.

It goes to show that one never knows who their true friends are. It's sad that we discover this after death.

My attorney said the next and final step is to prepare an accounting to submit to the beneficiaries who get a percentage so they can sign off on it to get paid. But he told me we needed to give any unknown debtors a chance to send final bills. By law this waiting period has to be seven months from the date that the court appointed me. That already took nine months just to get that appointment.

Anyway, we were lucky I guess. As I mentioned earlier, there are cases were the court never approves probate and the state takes all the money. But for us, now, we wait another seven months before things can be settled.

We still have to wait for final bills from the New York Surrogate's Court, the NY Public Administrator and the NY State Attorney General before my attorney can prepare the final accounting of what's left so that the percentage amounts can be calculated and distributed to those bequeaths.

After another seven months all bills were paid and the court gave approval to our final accounting. That's one and a half years since her passing!

My attorney sent out a copy of the final accounting to all the bequeaths for their approval. That's how it works.

We had to wait for each and every one to sign off on it and return their approval papers. If one is delayed for any reason, we simply had to wait. The checks can only be written and sent out to the bequeaths once all the approvals have been received by our attorney.That easily adds another two months to the whole process. Total time from death to settlement, one year and eight months.

Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok

Related articles by this author…

• Caring For An Elderly Parent, Aunt or Uncle
• Elder Care Aide Sues 97 Year Old Woman In Court
• Scattering Ashes at Sea, A Loving Farewell

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