After taking care of my father for several years my father passed away due to dimentia and copd. My sister said she'd take care of the funeral and everything. And she did, she took everything while he was ill, she had him sign the truck over. And after he passed she took everything, the camper, his entire home contents, and I believe he had stock that she sold without my knowledge! How can I find out if he had stocks that she sold without my knowledge? And what can I do about her taking everything? In Michigan the law states everything is to be divided 50/50 if there is no will. I am the one who took care of my father. She went behind my back and had my father sell 100 shares of Apple stock and conned him into moving into her house after spending the $20,000 in one week she threw him out in the streets with nothing.
One important thing to remember is until you've actually dealt with some kind of unfortunate situation after a relative has died where inheritance was involved, you probably won't know enough to start your research on other situations just like yours. It would be a good idea to start learning now based on what you described here but learn all you can so that you have more info to share with others. It wasn't until I had to deal with my own case that I had to start researching similar cases and you might be surprised just how similar various cases really are but how different they can also be
That changes the situation. RippedOff, since you were taking care of your father, did you have access to all his financial records? Were you handling his finances? Preparing his tax returns? Do you have any account statements from companies or mutuals with which he held stock? Who made any notifications after his death to those companies with which he had assets?
If your sister was proxy under a POA and the stocks were titled in your father's name, she could have had authority to sell the stocks on his behalf, before he died. If she didn't have that authority, I don't know how she could have sold his stocks if he wasn't convinced to do it himself, as apparently occurred with the Apple stock.
Could you clarify the timeline of when you took care of him, and when your sister "conned" him into moving in with her? And how did you get evidence that she "took" $20K? Do you have written documentation of that transaction(s) that would provide proof of either undue influence or theft?
Sorry about your dad RippedOff and I hope you are able to follow some of the great advice you received from Garden.
If so, that you'll also need to find out how to start a probate action so that what your sister took will become part of the estate to be divided equally between the descendants.
Since your sister took care of your father, she would likely know what his assets were. If you weren't privy to that information, didn't see any of his bank accounts or investment statements, the only other method I can think of would be his tax returns, especially a Schedule B on which he would report distributions.
But I really don't know if you could get a copy of his returns from the IRS unless you had some authority to do so, and you might have to get that through Probate.
A Probate Judge can order your sister to provide documents addressing your father's assets, and can also order her to rescind her efforts and/or pay you your equal portion.
You might want to start checking law firms and think about hiring an estate planning attorney or elder attorney who specifically handles probate litigation to help you.