Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Florida

Re: Notifiying a beneficiary named in a will

I do not know if your father died a resident of Florida or Wisconsin. I can speak only to Florida law. If there was a probate and there were assets that should have been transferred to you then you should have been notified. It is possible there were no probate assets and therefore nothing to transfer to those named in the will and no need to notify you of anything. You may want to call the probate court in the Florida county where your father resided and ask if any probate was opened. If there was a probate then the court will sent you a copy of the file for a small charge. If there were assets you knew about you may want to track them down, if that is possible. Do you know of other heirs who received anything? I know I am asking more questions than I am answering, but your question does not provide enough facts for a precise answer.

Re: Notifiying a beneficiary named in a will

Hello,

There is no federal law that says you have to be notified. If your father owned property at your death that the executor of the estate needed to transfer to new owners, AND needed a court proceeding to do that, then he would have been required under state law to give notice of the court proceedings to the beneficiary. Also, even if there is not a need for a court proceeding to get property to the heirs, then he/she should still have contacted the beneficiaries if personal property needed to be transfered. If you were not notified, maybe there was not enough property to require a court proceeding. For example, if he had a bank account, but had another name on the account when he died, then the other person on the account is the owner. There is no need to notify anyone about that. Another example:if he had a CD, but it was payable to someone on death, then that person gets the money. There would be no need to do anything under the Will. Bottom line: I have no idea whether everything was done right or not because I don't know what your father owned, or how he owned it.

Best wishes, Mark J. Mahoney