Intestate Estate - Criminal Behavior

I'm the oldest child, too! When dad died, followed by mother a couple years later; I stayed as far away as I could from the human buzzards and vultures.

By the way, I'm Native American (Cherokee), along with German, French, & Spainard.

army judge said:

I'm the oldest child, too! When dad died, followed by mother a couple years later; I stayed as far away as I could from the human buzzards and vultures.

By the way, I'm Native American (Cherokee), along with German, French, & Spainard.

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I am also part Cherokee, German and French, too! Also, Scottish, Irish, English (who married into the tribes), Delaware and Seneca...but the Aanishinaabe/Ojibwe Traditional Healers tell me that before the Europeans came we were really all one people (although the Eastern Woodlands tribes were more closely related) because we intermarried for many thousands of years as we were forbidden to marry anyone who came from our same clan (I come from the Big Turtle Clan) so we often met our future spouses from other tribes at gatherings.

A linguist who specializes in the Huron/Wendat language told us that the linguistic drift (crosslinguistic influence) between any Native American language and any language originating from other continents was 50,000 years (other than South America with whom we shared a trade route that was thousands of years old). He said that this is comparable to the linguistic drift between English and Chinese...and demonstrates that our Native American civilization has existed here for over 50,000 years. We also have (although very few in number) indigenous horses with distinct DNA and distinct characteristics that are native to North America which pre-date the Spanish horses that were brought here later:

Sacred Way Sanctuary | Indigenous Horse

As soon as this extremely challenging probate process is over, I intend to do just as you suggest and stay far away from the human buzzards and vultures

Simple answers to the three questions you asked in your original post:

1. No.

2. You can't. The PR is entitled to retain legal counsel at the expense of the estate, and the attorneys' fees take priority to any distributions to heirs.

3. There's no easy answer to this question - especially given that you regard 3 of your 4 siblings as duplicitous. If you stood to inherit multiple millions of dollars, you could probably find an attorney willing to handle the matter on contingency. However, if the estate is insolvent, then you'll receive nothing and will have to pay an attorney an hourly rate.

TamD said:

the house is not part of the the estate (Deed Upon Death) and we have no family agreement. Our mother's Intestate Estate is now effectively insolvent and the house is where the $$$ money is.

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OK...then why do you care about the estate proceedings? Who is/are the grantee(s) on this "Deed Upon Death"? Do you now jointly own the home with your four siblings?

TamD said:

could my 1/5 share of the proceeds from the sale of our mother's house (jointly owned now by all 5 heirs) be at risk if the PR hires an attorney to finish the probate process who might attach a lien to it for attorney fees and costs...even though the house is not part of the the estate (Deed Upon Death) and we have no family agreement?

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No. The house is not part of the estate.

TamD said:

Here is how the "Round Robin" choosing process could work

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If the estate is insolvent, these antiques should be sold to pay creditor claims. On that subject, how long has the probate been open? Did the PR give appropriate notice to creditors? To what extent have the creditors filed claims, and is there still time remaining for them to do so? If creditors received proper notice and filed to submit claims, then maybe the estate isn't insolvent.

TamD said:

We also have (although very few in number) indigenous horses with distinct DNA and distinct characteristics that are native to North America which pre-date the Spanish horses that were brought here later:

Sacred Way Sanctuary | Indigenous Horse

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The other hypothesis is that horses disappeared by the early Pleistocene.

Conventional thought is that as Euro traders and explorers made their way around NA, they brought horses. A new train of thought is that all horses are of European derivation, but were used by earlier generations of indigenous traders who got their horses from the earliest Europeans.

Nuanced for sure.

zddoodah said:

Simple answers to the three questions you asked in your original post:

1. No.

2. You can't. The PR is entitled to retain legal counsel at the expense of the estate, and the attorneys' fees take priority to any distributions to heirs.

3. There's no easy answer to this question - especially given that you regard 3 of your 4 siblings as duplicitous. If you stood to inherit multiple millions of dollars, you could probably find an attorney willing to handle the matter on contingency. However, if the estate is insolvent, then you'll receive nothing and will have to pay an attorney an hourly rate.




OK...then why do you care about the estate proceedings? Who is/are the grantee(s) on this "Deed Upon Death"? Do you now jointly own the home with your four siblings?




No. The house is not part of the estate.




If the estate is insolvent, these antiques should be sold to pay creditor claims. On that subject, how long has the probate been open? Did the PR give appropriate notice to creditors? To what extent have the creditors filed claims, and is there still time remaining for them to do so? If creditors received proper notice and filed to submit claims, then maybe the estate isn't insolvent.

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Hello, Thank you very much for your kind reply. The probate has been open since March of 2024 and appropriate notice was given to creditors, however, there were no creditors who came forward or filed to submit claims. So far, we have paid for all attorneys' fees and costs out of pocket and for all estate expenses out of pocket.

Foamback said:

The other hypothesis is that horses disappeared by the early Pleistocene.

Conventional thought is that as Euro traders and explorers made their way around NA, they brought horses. A new train of thought is that all horses are of European derivation, but were used by earlier generations of indigenous traders who got their horses from the earliest Europeans.

Nuanced for sure.

New Research Rewrites the History of American Horses

Native Americans spread the animals across the West before Europeans arrived in the region, archaeological evidence and Indigenous knowledge show

www.smithsonianmag.com

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Hello,
Yes, it would be nice to have multiple specimens and DNA samples of several breeds of indigenous horses whose genetic lines have not been mixed with horse breeds who originated on other continents... but there are very, very few of these indigenous horses left.

Sadly, despite the fact that the BLM is aware of the fact that the wild horses on our range lands are not only immune but sterilize the soil where the prions exist that cause "Mad Cow Disease" in cattle, "Chronic Wasting Disease"in deer and elk, "Scrapie" in sheep and Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease in humans; these beautiful animals continue to be rounded up by the BLM, sold and sent over the border to Canada where they are slaughtered for meat or sold to the Chinese as "live cargo" and slaughtered in China.



Excerpt:
"It is quite important to note that among large North American herbivores, wild horses (an American native species: click here) are uniquely immune to prions, arguably so through some evolutionary process, which we do not yet understand.

And by abating grasses and brush (each horse consuming 30lbs. of dry grass and brush daily) one of the suspected vectors, wild horses can meaningfully reduce environmental prions affecting other grazing animals, including cervids. This is important because the rate of infection for this prion disease (CWD) is believe to be dose-related. Such grazing by wild horses also has the added benefit of reducing the fuels (grass and brush) for catastrophic wildfires as I discuss in this article.

As we consider all of the foregoing, in light of the BLM's notion of removing even more wild horses from public lands to increase and extend grazing areas for cattle and sheep into known grazing areas where cervids are present, such a move is clearly a "bad idea" according to Dr. Zabel."

Also, here is a very interesting PDF of a Dissertation entitled, "The Relationship Between The Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas And The Horse : Deconstructing A Eurocentric Myth" by Yvette Running Horse Collins, PH.D., that is quite informative:


Excerpt from Chapter 1 bottom of page 2:

"When the European explorers arrived in the Americas, they brought with them their belief that all that was "civilized" originated from their homeland and their culture. At the time of the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s, one of the marks of "civilization" included one's possession of the horse and one's mastery of horsemanship skills."

...and Excerpt from Chapter 1 middle of page 4:

"Dakota/Lakota Elders as well as many other Indian nations . contend that according to their oral history, the North American horse survived the Ice Age, and that they had developed a horse culture long before the arrival of Europeans, and, furthermore, that these same distinct ponys (sic) continued to thrive on the prairies until the latter part of the XIXth(19th) century, when the U.S. government ordered them rounded up and destroyed to prevent Indians from leaving the newly-created reservations. 13"

I also remember reading in National Geographic way back in the late 1990's or early 2000's ? that they had discovered a geothermally heated valley in northern, frozen, Alaska where animals (including prehistoric horses) that they had formerly believed to be extinct still survived and thrived. But after that...I could never find any other information ever published about this discovery again, so I am guessing that they might not wish for curious visitors to pollute that unique ecosystem.

Apparently, the Vikings were trading with our Native American tribes in the Great Lakes region about 1,000 years ago and the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean would never have happened without Michigan copper (modern metallurgical testing). There is a fascinating book about this entitled:

Michigan Copper the Untold Story a History of Discovery by C. Fred Rydholm


There is so much of our commonly accepted history that is inaccurate...it would be wonderful to be able to time-travel and see for ourselves

TamD said:

So far, we have paid for all attorneys' fees and costs out of pocket and for all estate expenses out of pocket.

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Why would you have paid for any of these things?

If the time for creditors to make claims has passed and none have done so, then the estate isn't insolvent. If the only estate assets are items of sentimental, and not intrinsic, value, then the heirs should agree on a distribution system. Otherwise, the PR should conduct an estate sale to liquidate the estate and distribute the net proceeds to the heirs. If I were you, though, I'd be more concerned about the house.

zddoodah said:

Why would you have paid for any of these things?

If the time for creditors to make claims has passed and none have done so, then the estate isn't insolvent. If the only estate assets are items of sentimental, and not intrinsic, value, then the heirs should agree on a distribution system. Otherwise, the PR should conduct an estate sale to liquidate the estate and distribute the net proceeds to the heirs. If I were you, though, I'd be more concerned about the house.

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Thank you so much for your questions and your kind suggestions. The PR had originally hired an attorney who did almost no work at all and almost nothing to advance our case from March of 2024 - to the end of August 2024; failed to file documents on time and placed our case in a "Delinquent" status for the Inventory and Appraisal (which I had to do myself); made regular phone calls to the PR (who lives in Guam) to talk about the weather and her son's tuition at Stanford and her new law firm and fancy office in Lake Oswego, Oregon her and co-workers, etc...(personal life); and then she took a month long vacation to Europe - all the while sending us a monthly invoice like clockwork for an average of $1,200. per month. Our first invoice was about $5,000. (as she charged us for her "initial consultations where she regularly called the PR to "discuss" the probate process) and all she had done at that point to advance our case was open the probate. This attorney is no longer on the case but we ultimately paid her a little over $10,000. because everyone wants to keep all of our family heirlooms and antiques.

Yes, I wish that the heirs would agree on a distribution system...but they are all still fighting about how to do the division and why some heirs feel that they are entitled to the lion's share. I think that I may have convinced the other heirs to go with the "Round Robin" division process (mentioned in one of my replies, above) as it is the distribution system that everyone will settle for. We will see, though...Hopefully, common sense will prevail and they will recognize that everyone is not going to get every little thing that they want and they may just settle for the "Round Robin" to get things wrapped up and empty out the house so we can sell it