Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Nebraska

Re: Dad's estate

It depends on whether your stepmother survived your dad and was still married to him when he died. A bond is insurance that the personal representative won't misappropriate funds from the estate. Whether or not you should sign the waiver depends on who the PR will be, how much you trust them, and how much you have at stake to lose. You should probably hire a probate attorney to help you through the process. There are a lot of mistakes made in probate court which could be avoided with proper advice.

Re: Dad's estate

You should hire a probate attorney. A couple of things you will need to do is 1. Determine if your grandparents had a will and probate their estate. You will need to "clean" that up, especially if there was real estate that may require cleaning up title to the assets.

2. As in the previous response from Duke, if your stepmother was still married to your father, the distribution goes as follows:

30-2302. Share of the spouse.

The intestate share of the surviving spouse is if there are surviving issue one or more of whom are not issue of the surviving spouse, one-half of the intestate estate.

Issue is a term that basically means children. Basically, at first blush, it appears your stepmother will receive 1/2 of your father's estate.

3. The bond requirements depend upon if you trust or know the Personal representative. If the Administrator/Personal Representative of the estate is yourself and you anticipate any problems with the heirs, I would get a bond to protect yourself in the event of any errors.

Hope this helps.