New York Family Law Blog
A New York Family Lawyer knows that when losing a loved one, the pain is tremendous. And, finding out that your family is in financial ruin is even more difficult. That is of course, if your family is actually suffering from poverty after the loss. One family parted ways as the widow and the son of the deceased tricked the two girls in the family into believing that their father was deeply in debt when he died.
The man’s widow was to receive one-third of the man’s estate and the rest was to be split equally between his son and two daughters. The son and the widow hid the fact that there was a will and insisted that the property the man owned would need to be sold. The young man finished law school but never joined the bar and basically built up a real estate business for himself.
The girls who found the will in a Bronx courthouse, promptly drove to their brothers home in Long Island. The sisters confronted their brother who eventually called the police to escort the sisters out. The case has remained in a Family Court since that time. Seven years later, a judge in a Bronx court ruled that the statue of limitations had expired. After an appeal, the decisions was reversed setting the stage for a second trial.
During the time of waiting, one of the sisters borrowed against her teacher’s pension and the other was on food stamps and was threatened with foreclosure. The sisters were helped by lawyers willing to work on the case pro se because neither of the ladies could afford a lawyer. The sisters eventually received the rights to various properties but were still upset because they felt like their father had wanted them to enjoy his estate while they were young.
Although this case will probably loom even longer, as the brother is disputing the price of one of the properties that the sisters acquired, this is definitely a learning curve for others. And, because of that, this could very well be one of the longest of its kind. A New York Custody Lawyer commented that family Court is normally where cases like this occur but with the time invested in this one case, this case definitely seems unique.