My mother-in-law passed away April 2011 in Maryland and her lawyer filed her Will with the appropriate county Register of Wills and resigned. She has two sons (my husband who lives here and his brother who has lived in another state far away since 1981). My husband was her financial power of attorney for the last few years and paid all her bills, and sold her house for her. But she made the brother far away the sole beneficiary in her Will (she had dementia and made 3 codicils after the initial will in 2008, one each year). Maryland allows people with dementia to make Wills. She drained much of her finances paying for a very expensive assisted living facility. She made bequests to people all over the world that amount to just about the $115,000 she has left. Since the brother far away won’t inherit any money from administering this estate, he has refused. He asked me to do it. I am wondering about several things. There will be no estate taxes in MD & there is no income from the estate after death since it consists only of bank accounts. MD probate charges a 10% tax that I am supposed to withhold from the bequests paid to people who are not direct relatives. Most of her bequests are to friends. Should I withhold 10% for people who live outside the US? The bequests are $5,000 to $10,000. Also, the lady who ran errands for my mother-in-law received checks from her for $25,000 and $5,000 several times during the last three years. I read that I was to check her finances back 7 years to find out if any gifts were made beyond the yearly limits for those years. I think that MD state wants gift taxes paid on those gifts. This lady had a key to my mother-in-law’s condo and looted it after her death. Since my husband was not a beneficiary, he thought he had no right to any of his mother’s property, so he just informed the attorney about the theft, and he promptly quit. The assisted living condo was costing $285 per day, and this lady had a very large home and we were concerned that we should not take anything of his mother’s since he was not named in the Will. So my husband hired movers to move all his mother’s possessions to this lady’s house with the understanding that she would hold it in reserve until his brother came here and her grandchildren (our adult children too) came to see what they would like, yet the brother never came. We were asked to recover certain things for him. When we went to the lady’s home, all that she made available to us was a large bag of my mother-in-law’s used shoes. She announced that some of my mother-in-law’s other friends had “claimed” pieces of furniture etc. We felt helpless and angry, so we left but not before the lady demanded reimbursement for things she had purchased for my mother-in-law like laundry detergent (she washed her clothes), and Depends etc. One of my children asked where the contents of her Nana’s china cabinet were (that had been gifts to their Nana and also contained items designated to for my children) and the lady claimed that my mother-in-law had given them to her. We paid the lady and left. I now realize that all my mother-in-law’s personal possessions belonged to the estate. We had asked the lady to return the key and credit card but she did not until everything had been moved to her house. She seemed to think it all belonged to her. Can I deduct the cost of the movers from her bequest? Can I determine a fair market value for all the furniture and personal belongings and deduct it from the lady’s bequest? Do I need to hire appraisers? What if the lady no longer has the furniture and belongings? All my mother-in-law’s jewelry went missing including the large gold necklace that she always wore and was wearing the day before her death (my husband took a cell phone picture of her in her hospital bed to send to his brother to try to convince him to fly here to visit her). Is everyone who is listed in the Will a beneficiary? I have been reading and since the brother was named as the sole beneficiary, it seems that these people are not considered to be beneficiaries per se. If I want to collect a fee for my time, I need the permission from all the beneficiaries. Since they live all over the world, this would be exceedingly difficult, but if the sole beneficiary brother is the only true beneficiary, then I will only need to obtain his permission.
Thank you.
Agh! Wall of text!
Reported for subsection forum move.
Get a lawyer.
I’m going to move this to General Questions.
Also we need to remind you that nothing you might receive here should take the place of competent advice from a legal expert.
Finally, I should tell you that paragraph formatting is really really your friend. Many, if not most people will simply skip this because it’s too much effort to read through this wad of unformatted text.
Legal advice is best suited to IMHO rather than ATMB.
I would also suggest to the OP that breaking up your post into paragraphs would make it more readable.
Sorry about that. I tried to edit it but it didn’t work…
Please delete. I do not want to receive any further advice. Thank you.
Get two, they’re small.
We don’t normally delete threads here, but I’ll close this.