An estate is a legal entity created in the absence of a person (presumably by death).
Claims on an estate can last initially during probate, the time immediately after the death of an individual to when assets are bequeathed to inheritors.
An estate can last for years…even decades.
But indefinitely?
Does The Law ever step in and declare an estate null and void after some set length of time?
Or does an estate “live forever”?
I can’t imagine anybody laying claim to the Estate of George Washington or anybody else who died centuries ago.
I know that freehold estates, which involve land, can exist for a lifetime or forever. A freehold estate is a type of real estate ownership that gives the owner the right to use and pass on land for an indefinite amount of time.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you - but for an estate to live forever, that would mean the property would not have been distributed. I don’t see why anyone would want to do that , with the exception of literary estates (and I assume there must be something similar regarding other creative work) which still don’t last forever , as the copyright will eventually expire.
Keeping the estate open forever would mean that the beneficiaries have not received their inheritance - certain types of trusts can last forever but that isn’t the same as the estate lasting forever.
In law, the term “estate” means several different things. A probate estate is the one associated with cleaning up after a dead person. That’s a different and unrelated kind of estate from the “freehold estate” that @dolphinboy mentioned.
Details vary by states but there is a finite time, commonly 6 months, for any creditor to register a claim against a probate estate. Any creditor who fails to file timely forfeits the debt owed to them. Forever.
Once the creditors’ claims period has run, the claiming creditors get paid then typically the executor is free to distribute whatever’s left. Net of heirs’ infighting over which will is controlling, whether there even is or isn’t a will at all, etc.
IANA lawyer, but I doubt there’s a formal time limit on a probate estate in most jurisdictions. Legal fighting can continue almost forever in theory. But in practice, most folks lose interest in the battle about when the last of the money being fought over has been spent on lawyers.
Sort of in line with this. My mother died 2.5 years ago. Was a simple estate. We turned her bank account into an estate account with both my brother and I owners.
Her home is sold, all bills paid. Noting has been coming in. I’m going to close that account tomorrow.
A good friend and collaborator agreed to be the executor when his FIL died. Six years later the relatives are still squabbling over the estate. It basically concerns one of his SILs who had been living rent-free in her father’s house and wants to continue to do so, since she has little or no income.
The rule against perpetuities is a legal doctrine that befuddled me and countless other students in law school. But, it essentially prevents a person from indefinitely controlling a property interest from beyond the grave (“life in being plus 21 years”). This is a common law doctrine and has been heavily modified in some states.
William Jennens estate remained in dispute from his death in 1798 until 1915 when the last claim against the estate was dismissed (William Jennens - Wikipedia)
I have a vague memory from some tabloid TV episode that a woman claimed to be Elvis Presley’s half-sister, and brought a claim against the Estate of Vernon Presley…Elvis’ father.
But that has nothing to do with what I think the OP is talking about, a probate estate.
If there are heirs, I would imagine the probate case can be open for as long as it takes to resolve disputes, timely filed.
However, if there are no heirs, then many (most? all?) states will have a process to transfer the unclaimed property to the state. Escheatment. For example, in Texas:
Sec. 71.001. ESCHEAT. (a) If an individual dies intestate and without heirs, the real and personal property of that individual is subject to escheat.
(b) “Escheat” means the vesting of title to property in the state in an escheat proceeding under Subchapter B.
Sec. 71.004. PRESUMPTION OF DEATH WITHOUT HEIRS. An individual is presumed to have died leaving no heirs if for the seven-year period preceding the court’s determination:
(1) a lawful claim to the individual’s property has not been asserted; and
(2) a lawful act of ownership of the individual’s property has not been exercised.
So if, for example, someone has died and after 7 years no one has come forward to claim their estate, then it becomes the state’s property.
The overpriced lawyer who helped us with my mother’s probate estate said we should file to close the estate, and if that filing wasn’t challenged in a year or would become final.
Which reminds me, the year is now up, rather to my surprise, the lawyer didn’t send us a note about that along with a final bill, and it’s time for my sibs and i to settle up. (We distributed all the estate without knowing exactly how much the lawyer and accountant would bill. My sister paid most of those fees, and the rest of us agreed to split them. Now that there won’t be any more fees, it’s time to do that.)
Not in all states - in my state, there is no time limit for heirs to claim money that was turned over to the state. It isn’t always worth it- my grandmother died in 1988. Some money was turned over to the state in 2003 ish. While my father’s claim was being worked on, he also died. And his older siblings had predeceased him. Even now, all these years later , the grandchildren could claim the money. We haven’t because we don’t know how much it is . If it’s $40 , it’s not worth the effort and money for one of us to get appointed the administrator so we can split it 9 ways. But we could, so it’s really not the states property.
I certainly had that fictional case in mind when I wrote that. IANA lawyer, but I was married to one for 33 years. One who did a lot of wills and trusts, though rather little probate.
The certainly beats by a long shot the most infamous recent dragged out probate case: Howard Hughes. Died in 1976, settled in 2010. Hughes left no will, so there was a fight between his many cousins and Hughes’ presumed intended beneficiary his Hughes Medical Institute. The cousins won but it still dragged on due to disputes involving CA wanting in on it and other matters.
The problem with the rule against perpetuities is that under its orthodox interpretation, it must be guaranteed that the interest vests absolutely within the perpetuity period (“life in being plus 21 years”); there must not even be a theoretical possibility, however remote, of it not vesting. Many wills have failed to comply with the rule (and hence been struck down) because of some theoretical scenario whereby such vesting could fail. Trust law textbooks are full of examples of such scenarios (the unborn widow, the fertile octogenarian etc.). It was very hard even for lawyers to draw up a will with post mortem trusts that would be watertight against any challenge on perpetuity grounds. This is one of the reasons why English legislation simplified the rule in 2009 by setting the perpetuity period at a fixed 125 years, without fussing about lives in being and all that.
It was a lot of the complexity of various form of land ownership estates and the rule against perpetuities that gave the motivation for a lot of modern trust law.
Unlike a person, a trust need never die. Metaphorically at a high level they’re similar to corporations: legal persons who are not human and are immortal. So a trust can legitimately hold assets forever while operating according to the chartering documents under which it was created. A well-written and well-maintained trust can achieve the goals (e.g. preservation of the family fortune) for several generations after the grantor set it up.