Bullard, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

It means two things.  First, you agree that you do not need to know the date of the hearing and be present.  Second, it means that you agree that your stepmother should be able to administer your father's estate free of court supervision.  This means that she does need to submit an inventory but does not need the court's permission to sell, for example, your father's car and does not need to provide an accounting to the court.  A beneficiary may nonetheless request an accountign 15 months after the executor is appointed. Are you sure that a Will is being probated?  Ordinarily, beneficiaries are notified after, not before, a Will is admitted to probate.  In an intestacy, heirs are asked to sign a distributee's waiver of notice and consent to application for independent administration before the hearing.  

If sister-in-law never presents the will to the court to probate it, then it doesn't do anything and it can say what it wants. In order to be effective to transfer anything, the will has to be brought into court. It is much more likely that sister-in-law will use joint ownership of assets, and not a will, to bypass this process. If you suspect foul play, get a lawyer started on this.

Depending on how things were set up, there may or may not be a Will and even if there is one, there may be no assets to pass under the Will. A Will covers only those assets that are in the decedent's name alone. Any assets that were jointly held or that have a designated beneficiary, pass outside of probate and outside the control of any Will. So finding the Will will not help you, if the assets were set up in such a way as to avoid probate.