My FIL just died. His will left everything to MIL. We all knew that, and as far as I know, there won’t be a formal reading with a lawyer. Similarly when MIL dies, the estate will be divided among the 3 brothers, and they all know it.
Apart from someone contesting a will, is there ever any reason for a lawyer to be involved after the will is written? Am I correct in assuming that the gathering of the heirs on TV or movies is just a dramatic device?
Yes. There was another thread on this recently. This is all for TV/Movie drama and has nothing to do with reality.
While I’ve never seen a gathering for reading the will, lawyers are often involved in filing the necessary probate form with the court. I’m sure it varies by jurisdiction.
Lawyers may also be really helpful in dealing with the legal details of distribution, sorting out who needs to get which form and where to get sufficient copies to do so, and so on.
But I’ve never heard of them gathering everybody to hear the will read, except in old detective stories and so on. And in a lot of cases I don’t think it would be remotely practical – the will may name people who live in multiple states or even continents, not all of whom can readily travel.
The only time I heard of a reading of the will was when my grandmother passed away. 2 issues came up that required the estate to go to probate court. My mother and her 2 sisters felt that their half brother should not be entitled to any of the estate. And the widow of one of the brothers that passed away 11 years earlier thought she should be entitled to his part of the estate. This was for an estate that had a total value of about $40,000. The will basically stated to sell everything and divide the funds equally among her children. The judge ruled that the step brother was entitled to a full share of the proceeds and that my uncle’s claim to the estate expired on the day he died. An argument started in the hallway outside the court, my Uncle Don put a quick end to it. He told everyone to shut up and that as executor of the estate he would donate all the money to the charity my grandmother volunteered with for many years. Everyone agreed to that so that is what happened.
Couldn’t a will specify that all claimants must attend such a reading to be eligible for any benefit? …and spend the night in a haunted house?
I wonder if that ever happened at any point. Why would you need to be physically present. The lawyers or whomever’s running the estate can just send out letters. If you inherited the estate you aren’t going to be able to have it in the next five minutes, there is no reason to be present for a reading of the will.
Maybe that sort of reading of the will happen if the lawyer is the executor of the estate. If the estate was large or complicated, naming a friend or heir as executor might not work out so well if they don’t have the proper background for the estate issues. It could be better to have a law firm be the executor to manage all the various legal issues. In that kind of situation, I could see the law firm gathering everyone together to discuss the distribution of the estate since the law firm is the one in charge of it. But if the law firm is not the executor, then whoever is named as the executor would decide how to let the heirs know who gets what.
Maybe there’s more drama with rich people. "Who’s going to get the yacht? “Who’s going to get the beach house?”
Why would the estate runners want to deal with the drama? As far as I know the will isn’t a public document. It’s a legal document. But each person named can just be contacted personally with what they inherited. If the yacht isn’t included, you didn’t get it. Do you have a right to know who did get the yacht? I don’t think so? I don’t know of any right to hear what’s in a will, therefore there’s no reason to have a communal gathering and ensuing drama.
In Illinois, an attorney is required to file a presumably valid will with the clerk of the court. But the filing of a will is no guarantee that the property will be disbursed accordingly. Some interested party has to know there is a will and initiate probate proceedings. If no one initiates probate, whoever has possession and control can disburse the assets however they wish.
But the “estate runner” has usually just died and the executor could be anybody the deceased trusted to carry out their wishes; not necessarily a lawyer. All that executor might know about his duties is what he has seen on TV or in movies.
If that’s all they know they are poorly informed enough to not have seen the TV and movies with will readings. It’s a hoary, decades old trope at this point. Anyone under 50 probably wouldn’t have those references.
Seems to generally be done by sending out letters; which has the major advantage of providing everybody with statements in writing, so you don’t have arguments over whether the lawyer said Eliza or Lisa was supposed to get the Rembrandt.
Also, of course, the heirs don’t all have to travel; and the lawyer won’t have to deal with possible fights, verbal or otherwise, right there in the lawyer’s office.
The will’s probably public record; in which case you do have a right to know. But “public record” means anyone can get a copy; not that it has to be read out in public where everybody can hear it.
Whoever first used the term “estate runner,” please clarify if you meant someone other than the executor. And other folk, if you mean executor, why nt use that word. I have never heard of an estate runner, but I’m happy to be educated.
As TL says, I am not sure why a will filed with the clerk would not be viewable to anyone who wished. I supposed there might be some methods to try to restrict access, but I’m not personally familiar with those. My guess is if opaqueness is desired, that can be accomplished via trusts.
Or, to be more modern, the haunted condo! Or else, maybe the heir must get married in order to inherit. I know of a couple of movies that have this plot, and of course, love always wins, haha.
I think it may have been different a century ago, before there were photocopiers and people were less spread out, at least in England, where the trope seems to have originated. Reading the will may have been the most efficient way to get the word out to all the interested parties.
I wonder whether it might once have been necessary to read wills out loud if some of the heirs were expected to be illiterate – though that doesn’t seem to be an assumption in any of the mystery stories I’ve read it in; and I think, at least in England, you’d probably have to go back at least a couple of hundred years for that, and a good bit further for families who had enough to leave to make for complicated wills.
But maybe it started that way, and in some areas the tradition hung on? It seems to me unlikely (though not impossible) that it was made up out of whole cloth for the convenience of somebody’s plot, if it had never actually happened anywhere. Once one author used it, of course, it might have spread from there; the drama which I’d think would be avoided in real life can come in quite handy for a story.
If the will involved real estate, or some complex financial contract, some of the heirs might need to be on hand to sign paperwork. The executor might try to gather everybody together, to get it over with as quickly as possible.
If there was any complex transactions needed, I would think giving people time to thing about it would be more important than a “Grandad’s dead, sign here; I’ve got a tee time I can’t miss.”