Soulsbyville, CA Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

I would start by seeing if there was a probate proceeding in the Court where your great-grandmother lived. Unless your great-grandmother had a living trust, it is not possible to transfer real estate without some sort of proceeding in court. There is no public repository of wills. You will need to work with your father to determine if there is anything else. It may take a letter from an attorney to get your father to respond.

If you were payable-on-death beneficiaries, then the probate estate would not have affected those accounts, and the bank would turn those funds over to you and your brother upon receiving a death certificate. You need to contact the bank. They will either insist on turning over the account to the personal representative of the probate estate (there were no POD beneficiaries) or they will turn it over to you. If you can prove you were a POD beneficiary at the time of your step-father's death and the bank paid the money over to the personal representative, then your claim is against the bank for breach of contract.

Action can be taken in probate court to find out what is going on with the estate and why nothing has been transferred or paid from it. If a probate estate is still open, yearly accounting's must be filed. If he hasn't, he can be removed a executor by the court. It seems like an unusually long time for an estate to be open if there is only a property remaining.