My grandmother, his mother, died years ago and left a large inheritance to me and my father has kept it and has been spending it. He is 83 and very ill and doesn’t have much time to live. He has told me he adopted a 40 yr old man he met in a bar and is leaving everything to him so I don’t get what I was given from my grandmother. Can he do this to me? I know about all the things he had illegally done in the past and hidden assets from the IRS and he knows I know so I think that’s why he is doing this to me. I’m in Texas and he lives in New Braunfuls Tx. Is there anything I can do? This man has no right to what belongs to me and for him to be ok to keep it all is wrong.
There may not be much you can do at this point, but I suggest you contact a trust and estate attorney for advice.
Something is definitely fishy in Denmark, that's for sure.
Please seek legal advise, although since you say your grandmother died years ago, I'm not sure at this point if much can be done or not.
And I guess my final questions to you would be, if your grandmother died years ago, why are you just now wanting the money that's supposedly yours? Why did it take you so long if in fact it's rightfully yours? Something just doesn't make sense here.
How did your father get that?
If your grandmother did not safely and legally give you an inheritance, then there is no way to retrieve that at all by hearsay of someone who is dead many years.
If your father illegally confiscated through fraud your inheritance the statute of limitations is likely done.
If your father is leaving his stuff to a bar friend there is ZERO you can do about it.
You should see an attorney with the DOCUMENTS and with the FACTS in this case. The attorney will explain whether or not you have a legal action under the law.
If you do not, then move on with your own life knowing there will be no inheritance when the old man dies. And good riddance, basically, to someone that abusive. Leave him to heaven. Get on with life.
And then, there IS no will. Nothing written down or made record of.
You're stuck. You cannot prove anything without a written will of some kind. The next of kin will inherit everything.
There has to be record somewhere of a will. Talk to a lawyer and see what options are yours.
My mother has held 'the will' over our heads for all our lives.. when I found out how ridiculously small the amount of the inheritance IS, I just laugh when she makes a scene about 'the will'. It's less than $10K and that won't change anyone's life.
She keeps making changes to it, so I would not be surprised to find that I am not even IN it anymore. And that's OK.
It does seem odd that you have waited years to make this an issue. Is it b/c he said he's going to leave what's left to a total stranger to you? This would bug me, but, it is what it is.
A will that has already been filed and probated in court is public domain. Anyone can look that up.
If Grandma had no Will then someone becomes an Administer and does the same responsibilities of the Executor. Difference is, the State determines who inherits. If Dad is an only child, he would inherit. If other siblings, he would need to split the inheritance between him and them. Grandchildren are not counted if there are children.
If there was a Will and you were mentioned as beneficiary and did not receive your inheritance you should have gone to Probate then.
See what would have happened if she did it legally, is that if you were a minor at the time of her death the inheritance goes into trust for you until you reach legal adult age. Whoever was named as the Executor of your grandmother's will and estate would have filed the will with the probate court in her area. This is called opening an estate. This is the only way her bills could get paid (if she had any) or how any of her heirs named in her will can collect their property or money. If your grandmother made a legal will bequeathing her estate to you while surpassing her actual children, the probate court would have notified the lawyer who made her will at the time the will was filed. If you were a minor at the time of her death, when you turned legal age you would receive documents informing you of your inheritance.
You should first visit the probate court in the town or county your grandmother lived in and look up her will. They will have a copy of it.
It's unlikely that you were legally named in a will as her heir. If you were your father would have had no access to her money. More likely your grandmother named your father as her heir and trusted him to give you what she wanted you to have. Without being named in her will as an heir, you don't have a case.