Estate experience: A sordid nightmare
This case would no doubt serve as a nightmare for any sane person living through it, if you listen to the guy telling it, J.D., as he will be named for this story, who has lived in Hidalgo County for more than 50 years and swears it’s all true. His experience in the Hidalgo County Probate Court, was enough to drive any man or woman crazy, he says, and he doesn’t have a problem telling it.
Advance News (ANJ): Please take it from the top. It all started with your mom’s estate, right?
J.D.: “It all started with the simple probate of my mother’s will. There were five of us, but two siblings objected to my mom’s will. So they filed a suit, an intervention. (An old-school McAllen-based law firm took their case.) And they accused my sister, who has passed away by now, of fraud and manipulating mom and (other things). Anyway, that’s the gist of the suit.”
ANJ: Can you give us a reference to this suit with regard to the time frame?
J.D.: “Our first court hearing was January 27th of 2020.”
“We finally probated the will in November of 2022. (For a while), the pandemic closed everything down, and nobody could do anything.
“In the meantime, (my two siblings’ attorneys), kept filing motions. We kept setting hearings, they kept getting canceled. We kept requesting a hearing on our motions, on our situation. And every time one would be set, we’d get a notice of cancellation or delay. A few days later, we’d all get set and get ready. Then we’d get our delayed notice. This just went on for almost three years.”
ANJ: So to set the stage, please. Among the siblings, there are five of you, and your brother and sister were the two contesting the will, right?
J.D.: “Right. There were five of us, and two were contesting the will.
“For years, we had all been fighting about one thing or another, so my mother came up with what she called a ‘Family Settlement Agreement.’ She told all of us to sign it after we had read it, and if any of us didn’t sign it, we’d get nothing from the estate. Her exact words were, ‘If y’all don’t sign it, you’re out of the will.
“I was sort of in the middle between two of my sisters. We three signed it. The two others didn’t (a brother and sister), so they were out, or so we all thought.”
ANJ: Then after your mom died, came the two siblings, saying they were unfairly cut out of the will, I’m guessing.
J.D.: “They just said they were manipulated. And our mom had been manipulated by my oldest sister who was executrix of the estate at the time. She has since passed on, but while all of this was going on, she was taking the bulk of the dirt they were throwing at the rightful estate.
“Their attorneys were also arguing that my other sister and I were co-conspirators in all of this, and we had all conspired against them.”
ANJ: Yep, I’d be frustrated. They had their chance to sign the agreement your mom handed them. Chose not to. And now they want to gripe, file a lawsuit, and pay expensive legal fees?
J.D.: “They said my oldest sister sold property that my dad had put into another company. And then mom wound up with it, but it shouldn’t have gone through the other company. It should have been divided in my dad’s will. The state of Texas is a community property state, so you get half of it.
“So anyway, there were a lot of motions filed back and forth, arbitration, motion for receivers, motions for this, motions for that. But there was never, ever, in three years, one ruling handed down by the (Hidalgo County probate court), nor did we ever go back to court after the 27th of January, of 2020.”
ANJ: Before we started this interview, you were speaking about your oldest sister who was executrix of the estate. Can you talk again about her for a moment?
J.D.: “While all of this was going on, my sister contracted cancer, and she was quite ill. (The McAllen attorneys representing his two litigious siblings) said, ‘Well, we think they’re just using that as an excuse to put things off.’
“So the court set a hearing date for her to appear, but sadly, she passed away before the hearing.
“We had all of her records from M.D. Anderson to show the court that she was indeed ill, all of the information from her physicians, All of that was submitted to the court.
“Before my sister died, we were all in on this Zoom meeting, but the probate judge (JoAnne Garcia) said, and this is on the record, that my sister was in good enough health to attend an in-person court hearing.”
ANJ: Even in normal times, people on chemo are usually also carrying around a suppressed immune system. To add to that, this talk about an in-person hearing was at the height of COVID, was it not?
J.D.: “Right, the Zoom hearing was in December of 2021. The judge set the hearing for April 27, 2022, but my sister died April 22.”
ANJ: Approximately four months after the judge had already deemed your sister well enough for an in-person court hearing?
J.D.: “Yes. “After that, my remaining sister and I just thought, it’s been three years, and this thing is still dragging on with no end in sight. So I wrote them up a settlement, and they accepted it.
“Meanwhile, my sister had died, and I know all of the legal stuff just aggravated (her cancer). To this day I blame my brother and sister for aggravating the situation and for calling her all of those names, and accusing her of fraud, theft, and all of that. She spent hours trying to refute their accusations and going through emails and going through correspondence while she had cancer. She was diagnosed after the lawsuit was filed, so she never really had a quiet, peaceful day after that. That’s why I think all of this just accelerated her death.”
ANJ: You have described this experience as a nightmare. Anything left you want to add to it?
J.D.: “If you look in the court record, there are like six pages of small print, hearings set, forwarded, cancelled. Motion applied for, no ruling. Motion applied by both sides no ruling. There were motions back and forth. And during those entire three years, there was never one ruling out of that judge (Jo-Anne Garcia). We had about 16 or 18 different motions and 14 different hearings that were canceled. That’s why I call it a nightmare.”
ANJ: Tell us the deal about the attorneys.
J.D.: “From what I know, the attorneys representing my siblings told them that there would be no problem. We’ll get everything we’re asking for, including attorney fees, they told them. They had all of these big exhibits. My older sister used to call them ‘dead trees,’ Just a bunch of paper. Then they charged my brother and sister so much, they quit paying them, and they fired them.
“We later estimated that they paid them a lot of money to get nothing out of it. Not one court hearing, one ruling, nothing, over a three-year period. I think what they got in the end was less than what they paid the attorneys.”