Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Minnesota

Re: Estate assets not beholden to probate

My understanding has been that the court has no jurisdiction over a non-probate asset. When it comes to life insurance, the terms of the policy itself control. If the person who died wanted the proceeds distributed in a certain way, it would have been an easy matter to have his insurance agent do the paperwork to set the policy up so it did that.

Even if you had a valid will, it would not control the life insurance policy. The only exception to that would be if the policy named the estate as beneficiary, which it apparently does not.

This got to be nonprobate because what goes into the probate estate is limited to things which cannot be distributed any other way. We only probate assets for which other arrangements have not already been made. So nonprobate assets include the following: assets that were owned jointly, assets that have a designated beneficiary (such as a life insurance policy or a bank account with a pay on death provision), and assets in which the deceased only had a life estate (that means it automatically belongs to someone else when the life tenant dies).

There may not be much you can do, but I stongly suggest that you consult a lawyer. Some detail you did not include in your question could make all the difference in the world.

Good luck.

This repsonse is for general information purposes only and does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Lots of people do sloppy things like this, trusting that the survivors will do the right thing. Sometimes they do what they know the deceased person would have wanted, even if the paperwork isn't right; and sometimes they don't.