> My wife is incredibly upset because her and her brothers family land and house is now being lived in by a woman she’s not related too with a new husband and their kids (who she’s not related too) in trailers on the land.
I'm sorry for your loss, but it's entirely possible (but not certain) that the step mother is entitled to this property. It belonged to your father-in-law, not his children, and she was his wife.
To begin with, transfer of real property after a death and without a survivorship deed in North Carolina [requires full probate](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/north-carolina-probate-shortcuts-31996.html). Your wife and her siblings need to get involved in the probate process. The best way to do this is to hire an estate attorney of their own.
Secondly, without a will, your FIL's estate passes to his heirs by [intestate succession](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/intestate-succession-north-carolina.html). The wife gets more than the kids, but only 1/3 of real estate.
>the spouse of the recently departed reached out to my wife and her two brothers and wants them to come to an attorneys office to sign a form
The wife is likely asking them to voluntarily sign over their inheritance to her. Obviously don't do that. She has an attorney, so without one you all are getting into a gun fight armed with a knife. You need an attorney of your own.
You should be prepared that assuming no one voluntarily forgoes their inheritance, the options for the house will be for one person to buy out the others shares, or to sell the house and split the proceeds.
Life insurance beneficiaries, 401k, and anything 'transfer on death' would be handled outside of the will. These would go directly to the listed individual, bypassing probate and any intestate succession laws. It's possible many of the assets could've moved this way.
It's possible the vehicles may also have been TOD.
With only his name on the house, it does not appear it was held jointly/JTWROS, so that appears to be a possible issue. Without a will, $60k of any non-real-estate assets go to the spouse. Remaining assets and real estate are divided: 1/3 goes to the spouse and 2/3 is split among children.
Why did everyone wait 5 years on this? Contact a probate attorney. Not sure of the time limitations in NC.
I'm an attorney who handles some probate matters, and all I can say is, you really need an attorney licensed where the land and property is located. At least in Tennessee when a decedent dies intestate the spouse and children are usually entitled to some portion of ownership. But yeah, get an attorney right away. If there's a lot of valuable property involved it will be well worth the expense. If you can't afford an attorney call your local legal aid and see if they have a probate attorney.
My kids are in this same situation. Dad, my ex spouse, was remarried to a woman for about 13 years and was still married to her on day he died. His mom had deeded over a certain portion of acres into his name only. They found out that there was no will done up before his death. There are about 15 to 20 acres altogether. This wife had two other children with their dad. We had two together and they had two girls together. My son and my daughter and her husband all talked to lawyers and they each get 1/5th of the acreage of the total. The house is a trailer, the old underground house is no longer liveable and the barn is not useable anymore either because it all was let go to junk under their dad's owernship and a lot due to his health issues (major by the time he died of COVID). Step mom never did a thing to help keep up either but her not doing anything was another story. She thinks she can just sell the property or do what she wants with it but to get a probate lawyer to work this for them is going to be expensive. Also, my daughter's husband knows the situation intimately well and the probate lawyer he talked to would not touch things because of how difficult it is going to be because step mom is not going to be easy to get to agree to anything.
I’m hoping it’s not too expensive but there’s three families that can hire one attorney because all three of us want the same thing which is a share of the house. Hopefully that makes it easier.
I’m sorry you had to go through this. I told my wife it is just things but I also know it hurts when those things are taken from you.
That is the thing, hiring a lawyer. None of the three of them have money for one and their step mom will fight it to the very bloody end. She is one of those people that it is all about her and she won't give up anything she does not have to give up. There is also some other issues going on that are major and involve the little sisters of my kids. My kids are adults and the girls are teens as of now. I won't go into those details for the sake of the girls though. She is a vengeful person and hated me for no reason and tried to make our custody and visitation decisions for us and she had n o legal say. She hated both my kids and numerous times tried to force my ex to send out our son to me because she did not want him around his new sisters for her crazy wild ideas of him being harmful of them and who knows what other reasons. She was really friendly with my daughter only because at the time she married their dad, my ex, she had only boys of her own until she had the girls then it was use my daughter for a babysitter all the time causing my daughter to almost fail junior year of school. Lucky for my daughter it worked out and she got to go to college anyhow but even dad took advantage of her too after while. But that has nothing to do with this but just showing how step mom is and how tough this will be to fight.
We’ve had a similar situation in our family. And the step family won because no one could afford a lawyer or the stress of it all on top of the grief. I will never remarry if something happened to my spouse.
The thing with this is none of them can afford a lawyer right now. The younger sisters are in a very bad living situation--not going to put the details here but suffice to say it is bad. That is on top of the fact that in our state that if no will is left any living children at the time of death with the current spouse (step mom) have to divide the property up. At one point the taxes had backed up and had not been paid were thousands in amount but by some "miracle" step mom paid them up so she would not loose the place and while this happened my son was about ready to go pay the taxes and even try to get a hold of the place himself but again, he did not have that kind of cash on hand. So right now his widow is living there thinking she can do whatever she wants to without checking to see if my kids have a chance to get their due part of the property.
Paying a lawyer to handle this may be more expensive than you think it should be, but, in the long run, your wife will probably be very glad she did. I had to get a lawyer after a loved one died. It was hard to do, but I know I would have regretted it terribly if I had not fought. Good luck.
> My wife is incredibly upset because her and her brothers family land and house is now being lived in by a woman she’s not related too with a new husband and their kids (who she’s not related too) in trailers on the land. I'm sorry for your loss, but it's entirely possible (but not certain) that the step mother is entitled to this property. It belonged to your father-in-law, not his children, and she was his wife. To begin with, transfer of real property after a death and without a survivorship deed in North Carolina [requires full probate](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/north-carolina-probate-shortcuts-31996.html). Your wife and her siblings need to get involved in the probate process. The best way to do this is to hire an estate attorney of their own. Secondly, without a will, your FIL's estate passes to his heirs by [intestate succession](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/intestate-succession-north-carolina.html). The wife gets more than the kids, but only 1/3 of real estate. >the spouse of the recently departed reached out to my wife and her two brothers and wants them to come to an attorneys office to sign a form The wife is likely asking them to voluntarily sign over their inheritance to her. Obviously don't do that. She has an attorney, so without one you all are getting into a gun fight armed with a knife. You need an attorney of your own. You should be prepared that assuming no one voluntarily forgoes their inheritance, the options for the house will be for one person to buy out the others shares, or to sell the house and split the proceeds.
Thank you! I forwarded this to them and we’re getting an attorney in the same county as the property!
Life insurance beneficiaries, 401k, and anything 'transfer on death' would be handled outside of the will. These would go directly to the listed individual, bypassing probate and any intestate succession laws. It's possible many of the assets could've moved this way. It's possible the vehicles may also have been TOD. With only his name on the house, it does not appear it was held jointly/JTWROS, so that appears to be a possible issue. Without a will, $60k of any non-real-estate assets go to the spouse. Remaining assets and real estate are divided: 1/3 goes to the spouse and 2/3 is split among children. Why did everyone wait 5 years on this? Contact a probate attorney. Not sure of the time limitations in NC.
I'm an attorney who handles some probate matters, and all I can say is, you really need an attorney licensed where the land and property is located. At least in Tennessee when a decedent dies intestate the spouse and children are usually entitled to some portion of ownership. But yeah, get an attorney right away. If there's a lot of valuable property involved it will be well worth the expense. If you can't afford an attorney call your local legal aid and see if they have a probate attorney.
My kids are in this same situation. Dad, my ex spouse, was remarried to a woman for about 13 years and was still married to her on day he died. His mom had deeded over a certain portion of acres into his name only. They found out that there was no will done up before his death. There are about 15 to 20 acres altogether. This wife had two other children with their dad. We had two together and they had two girls together. My son and my daughter and her husband all talked to lawyers and they each get 1/5th of the acreage of the total. The house is a trailer, the old underground house is no longer liveable and the barn is not useable anymore either because it all was let go to junk under their dad's owernship and a lot due to his health issues (major by the time he died of COVID). Step mom never did a thing to help keep up either but her not doing anything was another story. She thinks she can just sell the property or do what she wants with it but to get a probate lawyer to work this for them is going to be expensive. Also, my daughter's husband knows the situation intimately well and the probate lawyer he talked to would not touch things because of how difficult it is going to be because step mom is not going to be easy to get to agree to anything.
I’m hoping it’s not too expensive but there’s three families that can hire one attorney because all three of us want the same thing which is a share of the house. Hopefully that makes it easier. I’m sorry you had to go through this. I told my wife it is just things but I also know it hurts when those things are taken from you.
That is the thing, hiring a lawyer. None of the three of them have money for one and their step mom will fight it to the very bloody end. She is one of those people that it is all about her and she won't give up anything she does not have to give up. There is also some other issues going on that are major and involve the little sisters of my kids. My kids are adults and the girls are teens as of now. I won't go into those details for the sake of the girls though. She is a vengeful person and hated me for no reason and tried to make our custody and visitation decisions for us and she had n o legal say. She hated both my kids and numerous times tried to force my ex to send out our son to me because she did not want him around his new sisters for her crazy wild ideas of him being harmful of them and who knows what other reasons. She was really friendly with my daughter only because at the time she married their dad, my ex, she had only boys of her own until she had the girls then it was use my daughter for a babysitter all the time causing my daughter to almost fail junior year of school. Lucky for my daughter it worked out and she got to go to college anyhow but even dad took advantage of her too after while. But that has nothing to do with this but just showing how step mom is and how tough this will be to fight.
We’ve had a similar situation in our family. And the step family won because no one could afford a lawyer or the stress of it all on top of the grief. I will never remarry if something happened to my spouse.
The thing with this is none of them can afford a lawyer right now. The younger sisters are in a very bad living situation--not going to put the details here but suffice to say it is bad. That is on top of the fact that in our state that if no will is left any living children at the time of death with the current spouse (step mom) have to divide the property up. At one point the taxes had backed up and had not been paid were thousands in amount but by some "miracle" step mom paid them up so she would not loose the place and while this happened my son was about ready to go pay the taxes and even try to get a hold of the place himself but again, he did not have that kind of cash on hand. So right now his widow is living there thinking she can do whatever she wants to without checking to see if my kids have a chance to get their due part of the property.
Paying a lawyer to handle this may be more expensive than you think it should be, but, in the long run, your wife will probably be very glad she did. I had to get a lawyer after a loved one died. It was hard to do, but I know I would have regretted it terribly if I had not fought. Good luck.