Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Virginia

Re: Heir lives in diffrent state

If real estate, you might want a Virginia licensed attorney. The Virginia State Bar has a referral service. They are located in Richmond and can be found online as well.

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Re: Heir lives in diffrent state

Since this is a Virginia estate, you will need counsel from an attorney licensed in Virginia. The laws of who inherits from a person who dies without a will vary from state to state.

Both you and your sibling can seek advice from the same attorney, at least as to the facts of your relative's estate and the inheritance laws of Virgnia. If ever there is a conflict between you and your sibling, each would need to have separate attorneys, and neither could use the one hired jointly.

Many attorneys are listed (and rated) on a web site called lawyers.com, maintained by Martindale-Hubbell, the largest database of attorneys in the country.

Re: Heir lives in diffrent state

Well, everyone answering on this system will be an attorney looking for your business, including myself. After 8 years, I made a deliberate decision to go out on my own and not pay for an expensive office, keep my expenses down, and charge only $110 per hour. When in a law firm, I turned away so many people who had good legal claims but couldn't afford $200 to $250 per hour for the law firm.

It would help to know what part of Virginia the estate is in, because it is a big State.

First, when you say you are an heir to an estate in Virginia, I presume that the decedent was a resident primarily of Virginia at death. That would mean that Virginia law will govern all of the interpretation of rights and obligations. Because there is no will, standard legal principles of Virginia law will decide who gets what, depending on the family tree. Every attorney is licensed in a particular state and familiar with the laws of that state. Therefore, I would reccomend a Virginia attorney.

Second, two people can share an attorney of course. However, if there is any conflict between your interests, this requires special handling. If there might be any conflict of interest between you and your younger sibling, you will probably have to sign a waiver of any potential conflict to allow an attorney to proceed. If an actual conflict emerges, the attorney might have to withdraw. But as an initial analysis, any attorney should be able to look at the situation and see if there is any conflict. For example, if the amount each person gets is very clear and nothing is going to change the distribution between you, then I would not see any conflict, from a legal perspective.

Third, who is the executor (representative)? That person needs to either live in Virginia or else work with a Virginia attorney.

Fourth, the most important thing is for the

family to understand that they cannot just go in

and plunder the house without making an inventory.

The most urgent thing (hard to fix later) is that

there must be a complete inventory made.

Everything must be carefully accounted for. The

family all needs to understand that. It is

Virginia law that an inventory is required and

taking things without authorization can be theft. Out of ignorance, this is often ignored. But technically it is stealing to take things

out of the house without the executor officially

distributing those items and keeping a record

of them. A complete record needs to be kept of

where everything went. There are exceptions for

very small estates.

Finally, there are many legal referral services including the Virginia State Bar. However, the Bar would be set up for you to meet with attorneys here in Virginia which might be inconvenient. I can't remember the name of all the website services, but there are some that (I imagine) are fairly good. There is something like lawmatch or something.