Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Your uncle's inheritance goes to your mom's estate, since she has a vested interest, having survived your uncle. Since your Dad did not predecease your mom, he would take the royalties under her will. You need to determine if Dad's trust would include your Mom's inheritance in his trust's assets. If not, and if the value of the oil royalties is over $100,000, both your mom and dad's estate may need to be probated.

No real attorney who knows what they are doing can answer this question based on the facts provided. First of all, you need to at least repost in the New York category, which would determine the rules of intestate succession. Second of all, it is not clear whether your deceased uncle had any surviving children, a surviving wife, or surviving parents.

I agree with Mr. Roach. Without knowing what potential heirs your uncle may have had, there is no way to reliably answer the question. If, we assume for purposes of the question that your mother was her brother's sole heir under New York intestate succession law, we can get a little closer to an answer, but still not all the way there. In that case, Mr. Woo is right that by surviving her brother, your mother - and therefore her estate - are entitled to her brother's assets even though she died before they were transferred to her. If she had a will that everything went to your dad, you are obligated to transfer your uncle's assets to your father's estate since he survived your mother. What we cannot know from what you have told us is what happens then. Since your father did not know about these assets, he certainly would not have placed them in his trust. So the key question is whether he had a "pour over" will. That is a will that provides basically that anything the testator has not put into his or her trust before death, is willed to the trust. If he did, then the uncle's assets ultimately wind up in the trust. If he did not have a pour over will, but rather some other sort of will, the assets pass according to that will. If he had no will at all, or it does not cover these assets, then they pass by California intestate succession law (assuming he lived here when he died).