Sue My Family Over An Estate Dispute?

[Music] brought to you by the Every Dollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I have It's kind of an emotional question, but basically our our brother-in-law has not done what he was expected to do as the executive of a will that we would be involved in. And it's got to the point where we would need a lawyer. So, that is my question. Should we pursue a lawsuit even if we don't have the money for a lawyer? But we we would probably have the money once the lawsuit was settled. Well, you got to tell us more. Make make your case for us here. Okay. So, my father-in-law passed my father-in-law passed away in 2018 and left everything to his wife, which is my stepmother-in-law. Mhm. She passed away in 2020, leaving everything to her son and which is a stepbrother and then and then two other brothers. Mhm. The stepbrother that's the executive of the will went and sold everything in the house. Sold the house, the land, all of it. Okay. Behind our back. Behind our back. That was not the stated wishes of the will. No. What were the stated wishes that that that the three beneficiaries were her son and then the the other two brothers? And is one of those your husband? Yes. Okay. How big was this estate? Do you have any idea? The house sold for about It was listed at 795,000. Okay. Anything else? Everything that was in the house. Um tractors, cars, everything. I mean, he had two acres. What do you think it was all worth? Um, speaking to a lawyer, they said we it would probably be about a h 100,000 for everything in the house because we don't have any documentation for it. So, we're talking about 900. Mhm. Yes. So, you'd be owed about 300 at the end of this if all things had gone to plan. Yes. Minus the the back taxes that were paid when the house sold. How much was that? and um not very much, less than 50,000. Okay. Um but he also did a complete remodel to the house that we didn't know about either. I don't know if that is in the consideration or not. So, let me just make sure I understand this. The will said everything was supposed to be split three ways amongst the brothers. One brother said, "Forget that. I'm going to sell all of this myself." Yep. And then where is that money? like he so he sold the estate, he sold the property. Where is the money? Do you know? Hey, sorry for the interruption. This is important. No one likes to think about dying. But one day, your family will have to deal with everything you leave behind. So, the question is, will it be easy or a total nightmare? That's where Knockbox comes in. Knockbox is a kit with 15 categories and clear instructions that give your family an organized plan so they're not sifting through old paperwork and guessing passwords and dealing with lawyers. So, leave your family memories instead of a mess. Grab your Knockbox kit today at knockbox.com/ramsey for the best discount available. That's knockbox.com/ramsey. Where is the money? Do you know he's got it? And how long over what period of time did all of this happen? Um, well, I accidentally came upon the house being listed on Zillow when I was looking at land prices in that area. Uh-huh. I saw the the house that my father-in-law built on Zillow. When? Um, this has been going on a little bit before the house sold in October. So, a couple months before that la October of last year, 2024. Yes. Yes. So, when that happened, did you guys go to him and say, "Oh, so you just sold everything like, okay, so you're going to divvy it up three ways." And then he said, "What?" Well, he is not talking to us. He won't answer calls. he won't return anything from his lawyer. And we found out that the only thing that his lawyer has for us is a cashier's check for $5,000. And you said, "What's this for?" And he said, "What?" They didn't they didn't say. And so then did you then go to whoever the lawyer was who first, you know, read the will and said, "This is the executive." You went to him and what did he say? He the my brother-in-law won't return any phone calls to the lawyer. Got it. Okay. So now you guys basically on the run. So you guys then need to go to a judge and say, "Hey, the executive of the will is not carrying out the wishes of the will and he is keeping all the money for himself when the will clearly states." I feel like yeah, he essentially committed fraud. So what you'd have to do is petition in probate court to force the accounting of this, force him to show up, force him to deal with this. I don't know. He may have spent all this money. Exactly. So, we just I don't know that you're going to get what you're hoping to get out of it. Um I mean, it sucks that this happened. Yeah. Over five I'm just trying to understand the five-year play here because And I don't say this to sound any type of way, but if I know I have an inheritance from grandpa and grandpa died, you know, last year, I feel like I would have already known, forget 5 years, I would be wondering, okay, when are we selling the estate? When are we getting the money? So, I I want to know more about that. Negl I'm I'm I'm not trying to Yeah. say anything offending him, but there's a lot of other pieces here that we're confused about. Like, was the estate officially closed in probate court? What happened with probate? Well, the house was my father-in-law's that he he built this house on two acres and it was just an agreement between all of us that we weren't going to do anything right away because a written agreement or just a phone? No, no, just just talking. Okay. That we didn't want to set we didn't want to sell anything because we would like one of the three of us to buy the other two out and keep the property. Gotcha. Okay. But but he went behind our back and we we knew nothing about the remodel, anything. He was still talking to us about how it would be awesome that we moved there and things like that. Completely lying to us. Okay. Okay. And what was your timeline for moving into the house? Cuz again, we're talking 5 years. Was this like on like what was the timeline in you all's mind for saying here's when we're going to buy you out? Here's when that's gonna take place. When I was looking on Zillow, we were getting prices for the land to find out how much the land was going for so we knew how much to we would be paying him for us to move back there. Mhm. Here's here's the reason I'm asking these questions. I'm trying to get inside of the brain of the the son-in-law here. And the only the only thought cuz you're the only caller on the line, right? So, the only thought that I could pull up in my brain is maybe this guy was thinking, "Hey, they said they're going to buy me out. They haven't bought me out yet. Who knows what's on fire in his life." Maybe he thought whatever, they're not going to buy me out. I'm going to force the sale of this by just selling it myself. I don't know. I'm just trying to think what could be going on here because this is a extent like five years is a big timeline here. So, I'm trying to figure out what what could have gotten lost in translation. Either way, I think the first advice we gave stands, which is you you go in front of the probate uh judge and say, "Hey, here's what's going on." And do do you know if you have to pay an attorney to do that for you? Because that's that's my main question if we should pay attorney fees for such Well, I would have gone through the attorney who was dealing with the executive, but it sounds like you can't find him and he's not talking. So now, yeah, I'd be calling up the that circuit court or whoever, whoever you've been in contact with and saying, "What do I have to do to get in front of a judge?" I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. And I've never had to deal with this. I say, "What do I have to do to get in front of a judge?" Because the executive of the will is not doing what the will says. And then go from there. I'm guessing, yeah, it's going to cost you a little bit and it's going to cost you your peace. It's going to cost your time, and it's going to cost you your money. And so, I would just tread lightly before you pursue this for the next 5 years, all to find out there's nothing there. And that's going to really add insult to injury here. So, I would try to get all the evidence you can, all the do all the homework you can, get all the family members you can involved, get a copy of the will, get documentation of everything you can, all the communication with him or lack thereof, and then see what happens. But it might be worth at least reaching out to an attorney to see what the next step would be. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your