Sunday Morning Legal Question

tl;dr Guy I know died, fighting to bury him, no family, have no idea on will/instructions/estate/etc...


Question for the lawyers and folks who have been through this.

An older gentleman I know passed away suddenly in Oct. He was a great man, met him volunteering at a church charity. His wife and son died many years ago and are buried in town. I know he would want to be laid to rest next to them and am betting he's already purchased a plot.

I am also betting he had a will because he seemed well put together. But we don't have it and neither does the county. We asked all the friends and no one else was given instructions/info. His sudden passing didn't afford any time, he died in the ER after being taken to the hospital.

We (the church) immediately asked the county coroner to release the body to us for burial. It had to go to court to confirm no next of kin. Just this last week we have been given permission (AFTER OVER A MONTH!) to bury him. We are being asked to demonstrate we have the burial costs in hand and are urgently working on that ($10-15K).

We have been told we will be reimbursed from the estate after it goes through probate. I'm not worried about this because I know he likely had enough assets to cover the costs.

If there is a will I'm guessing he left a lot of it to our charity along with instructions (plot, funeral home, etc). The problem is no one we know of has a copy of the will. Short of breaking into his house, I don't even know how we'd check.

We want to honor his wishes. County doesn't seem to care, just want to know the costs are covered before releasing remains. It would obviously be much easier to have a executor (one of us) appointed.


How do we find a will?

Is there some kind of estate attorney bat-signal to put out to see if he had a will drawn? Would calling lawyers in his area to see if he was a client be a bad idea?

Contact all the local funeral homes, especially the ones who handled his wife and children. See if he has a pre-need or at-need file. He could have set something up and had it filed with them. When we had someone pass with no family, a lot of times it would be the county coroner's office who would have to rake care of the service. I'm suprised it is taking this long.

Why the need to spend $10K? Call the Neptune Society, they'll do it for $3K

AS for trust vs will. It depends how either are set up. We have a trust, will, living will, POA, POD Outside the daughter having to file a paper with the county for our house everything is protected to allow her to assume everything we own upon death.

We've discussed this before, IF you don't have something now (regardless of age) your family is the one who will pay the price, literally.


I too am not an attorney, claim to be, or offer advice for monetary compensation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Great-Kazoo

I too am not an attorney, claim to be, or offer advice for monetary compensation.

---

Yeah, but you're dead-on balls accurate.

Does anyone have access to his home? A neighbor who he left a key with? A friend? Distant relative?

If you have a vested interest as a beneficiary, and you managed to produce a will that that has no known chain of custody, I'd be very suspicious. If a representative of the court found the will in the home, that would be a different situation. Just sayin'.

Thanks all for your responses!!! And the advice on how to better handle things for yourself.

We had a meeting today to discuss (after church) and a neighbor was in attendance. Everyone is baffled as to why there is no will. Turns out he went through a major deal with his son's estate which has now called a lot into question.

The county has an investigator that already made one pass through the house and will make a thorough attempt to find a will. I don't know why it takes so long but apparently we had to beg to get them to care (like Fox said, they aren't motivated). The neighbor has been told to stay out. We have no rights/access and don't want to muddy things any further.

His car is gone which has everyone stumped. His friends drove it back to the house after the hospital trip and now it's gone. Could have been stolen I guess. Also learned he had numerous firearms and no one has been to secure them.

So the only problem we can solve now is getting him laid to rest. He had reserved a cremation plot which was news to me. Just didn't pay for it. So we can know his wishes were to be cremated which means we have to raise less money and can go that route knowing we are honoring what he wanted.

County/State has no concern over this, they will profit on it from auction, run down property, trash, weeds, = fines and fees.

If you do have a will, file a copy with the county probate court.