Your dad was executor of your aunts will but recently died so who gets your aunts money when she dies?

Answer 1

To begin with, this question cannot be properly answered without knowing the state in which your aunt's estate is probated. Different states have differences in their probate laws, some are minor, some are major. The question is not whether your father was executor; the executor has no inheritance rights just by being executor. The real question is who does the will leave your aunt's estate to and does it require that the beneficiary survive your aunt by any period of time. Assuming the will gives your father your aunt's estate (and makes him executor as well) there are two possibilities. First, the will might have a commonplace provision that your father has to survive your aunt by some specific period of time or the devise of the residuary estate is revoked and given to some other person as if your father had died before your aunt. If the will has no such provision, some state laws have provisions that automatically kick in. The purpose of these provisions is to avoid your aunt's estate from having to go through your father's estate and be subject to payment of his debts and inheritance taxes even though he probably never got the use and enjoyment of the money he should have gotten. Second, if your father survived the will's survival requirement or the statutory one (whichever applies) then your aunt's estate has vested in him. This means that even if your father has not transferred money out of your aunt's name or out of her estate's accounts, your father's estate must get it. It will then be distributed according to his will. In the second situation, any provision in your aunt's will that gives her estate to someone else if your father dies after she does is ineffective once he survives her by the requisite period of time.