Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Georgia

You ask two separate questions. Insurance is not a probate asset. It passes to the named beneficiary when the person who was insured died. So, the question is who was the beneficiary of the life insurance policy on your husband? Who most likely would have been the insurer? There is no registry for this. You might want to try sites like www.unclaimed.org or www.missingmoney.com and try looking under either your father-in-law's name or husband's name and see what pops up. If nothing, try calling life insurers and see whether you are listed as a beneficiary.

Assuming that your father-in-law owned the policy insuring your husband and made himself the beneficiary, then the insurance proceeds would go into the father-in-law's estate and you would not be entitled to it. You are only entitled to it if you are the beneficiary.

Regarding the father-in-law's estate, you would have to speak to a probate attorney who practices in the county/state where father-in-law lived at the time of his death. You do not relate any relevant details really. If father-in-law had a will, what did it say about his beneficiaries? Did his will have a survivorship clause? If the will had such a clause, your husband may have been treated as if he died before his father. In such case, what would happen to any assets left to your husband? If your husband truly died after your father-in-law, how many other siblings were there besides your husband and his sister? What does the will say about any assets left to your husband? What assets were owned by father-in-law and how were they titled? What debts were there in the estate? Did your husband have a will?

There is a procedure in GA for compelling an executor to produce a will. The will at least should be filed. Whether an estate will need probated at this point depends on what assets there were in the father-in-law's estate. Also what happened with your husband's estate? Was an estate ever probated for him? If not why not? If so, is it closed? It may have to be re-opened if there are any assets from the father-in-law's estate.

And why are you only getting around to this now? I understand the grief factor and that may have caused some delay, but 3 1/2 years? You really need to talk to a probate attorney who practices in the county/state where estates for both father-in-law and husband would be pending and be prepared to answer some of the above questions to see what can be done about (1) compelling the sister-in-law to produce the will for father-in-law and divulge any information about the life insurance policy; (2) see if an estate needs probated for father-in-law; (3) see if your husband was entitled to any assets from his father's estate; and (4) if husband was the beneficiary, determine if husband had a will or not and see if any estate will need probated for husband so that any assets to which husband was entitled can pass to husband's beneficiaries.