Gaslowitz Frankel partners Adam Gaslowitz and LeAnne Gilbert are currently involved in a case to determine whether or not Georgia’s “slayer statute” is applicable to bar the estate of a husband who allegedly shot and killed his wife from inheriting from his wife’s estate. The husband is alleged to have shot his wife, who was suffering from end-stage liver cirrhosis, moments before ending his own life.
The wife’s siblings have asked a court to enjoin the executor of the husband’s estate from using estate funds to probate the wife’s will and defend against the siblings’ efforts to expel the son as executor of his father’s estate.
The statute, O.C.G.A. 53-1-5, reads in part that an “individual who feloniously and intentionally kills or conspires to kill or procures the killing of another individual forfeits the right to take an interest from the decedent’s estate and to serve as a personal representative or trustee of the decedent’s estate or any trust created by the decedent.”
According to Mrs. Gilbert, Richard and Sandra Currier’s wills were written several years before their deaths. Sandra’s will provided that her assets went to her husband if she died first and that her stepsons were the next in line for inheritance.
However, if the slayer statute applies, the husband would be legally deemed to have predeceased his wife, in which case the husband’s estate could not inherit from the wife.
“The dispute is not whether or not he killed his wife,” Gilbert says. “It’s if he did kill his wife, does it fall within the slayer statute? The statute contemplates intentional felonious murder, but incapacity due to mental illness is a defense to the slayer statute.”
To learn more about the case, read this article from the Daily Report.
Gaslowitz Frankel LLC is the Southeast’s premier fiduciary litigation law firm. Our legal team specializes in all aspects of fiduciary disputes representing individuals, executors, trustees, investors, shareholders, and corporate fiduciaries in complex fiduciary disputes involving wills, estates, trusts, guardianships, and businesses. If you are involved in a fiduciary dispute, contact us for a consultation.
