My fiancee, Julie, and I live in Ohio, and hey sister, Jen, lives in Pennsylvania where they grew up. Their father passed 18 months ago and left no will. Since the passing, Jen has commanded the checking/savings accounts, vehicle, and is in the process of moving into their childhood home that the father left behind. Nothing has been said of probate, dividing assests, or even amounts in accounts and safety deposit boxes. She has tried numerous times to talk to her sister and get intormation from her or persude her to take neccessary steps to finalize this matter with no reciprocating effort on her sister's part. What options does Julie have and what is her best course of action?
She needs to hire an estates attorney to represent her interests. It should be a PA attorney who can ask the right questions and demand accountability. This should have been done very early on and this should be done ASAP, before assets are lost and things get any worse. This does not sound like a good situation and trust may be the issue.
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I am not licensed in OH or PA, so can only commet in general. I agree with my colleague that your fiancee should, after 18 months of unersponsiveness by her sister, regrettably egage a competent local probate litigation attorney in her father's state of residence (presumably PA).
The first thing he or she will have to sort out is what are you dealing with and what,, if anything, has been done about it so far. Are the assets probate or nonprobate assets? E.g., were any of the accounts jointly owned or "payable on death?" If so, to whom? You may find some or all were payable to Jen. Next, te attorney will have to determine who was on title to the house. Unless her father deeded it to him and Jen as joint tenants with right of survivorship, it will be a probate asset that will pass under the PA intestacy statute to his heirs. Unless he was married at death, your fiancee and Jen should be the only heirs (unless a sibling failed to survive but left grandchildren).
Once you determine what there is, what it's probably owrth and how it is owned, if there are probate assets (like the house probably is), your fiancee should probably petition the local probate or surrogate's court to be appointed Administrator of his estate. Then she will have legal authority to administer the estate under a fiduciary duty to herself and Jen. The attorney or a paralegal can probably do most of the local legwork.
Dependng on the value of the house and PA law, there is a third possibility - that Jen used a small estate affidavit procedure to transfer or sell it.
In any case, unless everything was nonprobate and left entirely to Jen, she owes your fiancee a fiduciary duty to see she is treated fairly and ends up with her shre. Consult a local attorney immediately to make sure nothing is done that would be difficult to undo.
