Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California
My grandfather passed away, his will contains the verbiage:
"Divide the assets between my children and grandchildren as mentioned below:"
Below that, his children's names are mentioned, but there are no mentions of any grandchildren.
Being a grandchild, do I have any benefit to the assets? Would I need to hire an attorney to plead my case or could I file a document with the court? There have been a lot of court filings already, but I'm in the dark as to what is going on. A court appointed attorney is the executor whom does not want to provide me much information. Aside form the death certificate and wills, the only information I have received is a Notice to petition administer estate, but this hearing has been rescheduled a few times now.
2 Answers from Attorneys
It is difficult to say what, if anything, you are entitled to. You should spend the time and small expense to have an attorney review the Will with you. That way you will know definitively what your rights are.
This is one of those questions in which there is no definite answer. On one hand, one can argue that since the grandchildren aren't listed, everything goes to the children named in the will.
On the other hand, one could also argue that the language of the will, referring to grandchildren yet not mentioning any of them, creates a patent ambiguity that allows extrinsic (outside of the will) evidence to be admitted as to your grandfather's intent, such as the testimony of the person who drafted the will (I assume it's not an attorney, because one would hope an attorney would have avoided this apparent drafting error).
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