Free Republic

Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, will be laid to rest Friday in Detroit. She left behind a glorious legacy of music and inspiration. What she did not leave behind was a will detailing her wishes for her assets. By not writing a will, she triggered a process in which her property and money will go through probate. And that's a lot of property and money. Her estate is worth over $80 million, according to gobankingrates.com. It will have to go through the potentially expensive and time-consuming bottleneck that probate court can be on its way to being divided among Franklin's...

Does anyone know an honest lawyer in the Richmond area? A close friend of mine was left a substantial estate by a uncle who died earlier this summer.After he passed, but before the will was probated, a care giver cleaned out his bank account. She was given signature rights for his care, not joint ownership.The will was probated in Israel per the uncle's instructions and deemed proper and legal. My friend would like to engage a lawyer who won't rip him off, but would review the details and the document to explain his options.Since he is unfamiliar with the U.S....

The Heir Hunters International team is now working around the clock on the genealogy of the alleged 'love-child' to establish a firm connection with Prince. Once the investigators are happy that the heir is genuine on paper they can demand a DNA test and submit a legal claim against Prince's estate. John Hilbert, partner in Heir Hunters International based in Los Angeles, also told Daily Mail Online of a SECOND potential heir who has come forward with another seemingly 'legitimate' claim. This individual claims to be offspring of Prince's father, John Nelson. Mr Nelson, better known as jazz musician Prince...

RANT! It's a frustrating situation to have in your hands a check from the US Treasury for over $141,000 and you can't do a darned thing with it except frame it and hang it on the wall as a souvenir. My MIL passed away in 2011, and my wife (as the only surviving relative) was named in the will as the executor of the estate and successor to the trust. The will was filed with the courts in L.A. and the long process began. We paid the IRS $240K the first year in estimated estate taxes along with a request...

A Tennessee judge set a tentative October trial date for the long-running legal battle over the estate of the late country star Jim Reeves, who died in 1964. At issue is a dispute over millions of dollars of past and future royalties from Reeves' body of work, which includes "Four Walls" and a bevy of other hits from the "Nashville sound" school of country music from the 1950s and 1960s. The (Nashville) Tennessean said Sunday the Nashville Seventh Circuit Court ruled that the case would be decided based on the interpretation of a 1976 will written by Reeves' widow, Mary...

Steve Niro got married in 1981 at age 23 and divorced less than five years later. At the time of the divorce, he and his wife were in their late 20s, and both were working. Niro remarried nearly 15 years ago, but he’s still paying his alimony. Two years ago, Niro’s youngest son graduated from college, ending child support payments and leaving his former wife with alimony of $65 a week. “The next thing I know, I get summonsed to court for alimony adjustment,’’ he says. A probate court judge increased the alimony to $700 a week even though the...

What had been shaping up as a nasty divorce now appears to be headed for a nasty probate fight. Iconic actor Dennis Hopper, who died Saturday after a long bout with cancer, had been seeking to divorce his wife of 14 years, Victoria Duffy. Now, say reports, she plans to battle for a hefty share of his riches. TMZ reports the couple's prenuptial agreement grants Duffy a bequest only if the couple was married and living together at the time of his death. She plans to argue that even though they lived in separate houses at the time of his...

It's been a long and colorful journey for a girl from a small Texas town. Anna Nicole Smith went to work in a Houston strip club and wound up as the trophy wife of an aging multimillionaire, setting up an 11-year-long legal war over his estate that now has traveled all the way to the highest court in the land. The fight over the fortune of oil entrepreneur J. Howard Marshall II between the one-time Playboy Playmate of the Year and Marshall's youngest son, 67-year-old E. Pierce Marshall, goes before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. (snip) Since then, the...

What Clayton Cramer Saw and (Nearly) Everyone Else MissedBy Clayton E. Cramer Mr. Cramer is a software engineer and historian. His last book was Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger Press, 1999). His web site is http://www.claytoncramer.com.Michael A. Bellesiles’s Bancroft Prize for Arming America has been revoked—the first time that a Bancroft Prize has ever been taken away from an author.[1] He has also resigned from Emory University after a blistering criticism by a blue-ribbon panel.[2] Is this embarrassing moment for the history profession a fluke, or indicative of deeper problems? I...

I'm asking this on behalf of a friend of mine whose father just passed away. The original copy of the will is missing; all the family has is a photocopy. The lawyer who helped to compose the will is nowhere to be found. What are the family's options for getting the will recognized by the state as valid? Does the lawyer have the only legal copy, or would there also be something filed at the county courthouse or elsewhere? Thanks in advance for any help. My friend needs something to go on this morning if possible.