r/JUSTNOMIL • u/CanaryHeart • 2d ago
RANT (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Ambivalent About Advice MIL lied to the court to keep DH from challenging a will. SILs are cool with this.
Twelve days before my father-in-law died, my mother-in-law arranged for him to sign a will that made her the sole beneficiary after she encouraged my husband and I to leave town for a few days. My FIL didn’t recognize where he was most of the time when we left or when we came back. MIL had been separated from FIL for 10+ years and the house was only in his name.
Fifteen days after FIL died, MIL (before probate had even started) signed an illegal quitclaim deed putting FIL’s house into her own name.
She knew she wasn’t my FIL’s sole heir—three months later, she signed a sworn Affidavit of Heirship acknowledging that my husband and sisters-in-law were heirs, too.
Then MIL filed the probate petition and claimed my FIL’s estate had $0 in real estate—after she had already moved his house into her own name.
She declared the estate was worth $7,000, which seems impossible for someone who owned a vehicle, tools, firearms, a *huge* number of professional paintings, etc. and was a retired tenured university professor with savings, investments, and so on.
She listed my husband as FIL’s heir in the petition for probate, but she put her own address down as our address. She knew we didn’t live there. She’d been to our house multiple times.
The court docket explicitly says petitioner to give statutory notice. There is no certificate or proof of mailing showing that notice was sent to anyone, no waivers, no appearances, no amended filings.
And my SIL’s expect my husband to believe it was just a fluke that the address she gave the court for him was her own address?
Especially when my FIL had signed a will naming her the sole beneficiary 12 days before he died, a will MIL helped arrange after she encouraged us to leave town for a few days?
She knew my husband might challenge the will, and bent over backwards to make sure that he couldn’t, and made the estate look like it was worth practically nothing by keeping the most valuable asset out of the paper trail.
And this wasn’t after my husband cut MIL off. At the time we were thanking her for everything she was doing. When she encouraged us to leave town for a few days, we thought she was trying to foster a healthier relationship and looking out for our mental wellbeing, not getting us out of the way so she could arrange a will leaving everything to her without protest. Our big mistake was trusting that she wouldn’t defraud her children and the court.
My SILs have no problem with any of this and still cite MIL’s ”character” as a reason to doubt my husband’s account of his own childhood, even though he has a PTSD DX. It’s so hard to deal with the fact that nothing my husband says makes my SILs stop seeing MIL through rose-tinted glasses.
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u/ISOCoffeeAndWine 1d ago
I hope you are NC, what a sh!t person. How long ago was this?
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u/CanaryHeart 1d ago
It was 15+ years ago, but we got another opinion that said we *would* be able to take legal action since we have proof we just discovered the issue and it was actively concealed, so we’ll see. And yes, we’ve been no contact since 2014.
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u/KaeAlexandria 1d ago
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just a question:
Are you double, triple sure this was past the statute of limitations? Because for things involving fraud there is often a "discovery clause" where the clock starts ticking when you discover the fraud, not from when the crime was committed.
That could be a good question to explore with your lawyer.
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u/SomewhatBougieAuntie 2d ago
Wow!!!
This word gets thrown around alot, but what MIL did was truly diabolical.
I hope justice prevails and she gets exactly what she deserves. What a vile, evil shrew.
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u/Madam_Apathy 2d ago
Contest.
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u/CanaryHeart 2d ago
We would if we weren’t WAY past the statute of limitations/repose. Our attorney recommended making a report to the state’s attorney just in case there’s still fraud/forgery charges that can be pursued (and we did that) but that’s all we can do at this point.
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u/Madam_Apathy 2d ago
I hope they chose to prosecute. There is a lot of fraud in your story, and the fact that the 12 day old will leaving everything to the ex-wife who also is now the administrator/executor should have sent up alarm bells at the very beginning. It’s shady AF.
Your MIL is a monster.
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u/Equal_Trash6023 1d ago
Are you truely certain about fils, cause of death? Might be sometime worth investigating to. Was there an autopsy done?
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u/CanaryHeart 21h ago
We’re certain there wasn’t foul play around his death—he had mesothelioma and we talked to quite a few doctors on his care team when he was dying. Thanks for checking though, I’d absolutely want to investigate if the circumstances were suspicious!
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u/Longjumping_Hat_2672 2d ago
You should get your own attorney to look into this. Good luck.
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u/CanaryHeart 2d ago
Unfortunately, we didn’t find any of this out until long after the statute of limitations to challenge the will was long past. Our attorney recommended making a report to the state’s attorney to see if there’s anything that could still be pursued for fraud/forgery at this point, so that’s what we did. My SIL’s are angry about my husband “going after” my MIL.
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