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After taking care of my father for several years my father passed away due to dimentia and copd. My sister said she'd take care of the funeral and everything. And she did, she took everything while he was ill, she had him sign the truck over. And after he passed she took everything, the camper, his entire home contents, and I believe he had stock that she sold without my knowledge! How can I find out if he had stocks that she sold without my knowledge? And what can I do about her taking everything? In Michigan the law states everything is to be divided 50/50 if there is no will. I am the one who took care of my father. She went behind my back and had my father sell 100 shares of Apple stock and conned him into moving into her house after spending the $20,000 in one week she threw him out in the streets with nothing.

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RO, is your mother deceased as well? I checked intestacy laws in Michigan, but I assume you have also. Is your sister aware of these laws? I didn't have time to check the procedure, but I do think that intestacy requires probate. You might call the Probate Court for the county in which your father resided to double check on this.

If so, that you'll also need to find out how to start a probate action so that what your sister took will become part of the estate to be divided equally between the descendants.

Since your sister took care of your father, she would likely know what his assets were. If you weren't privy to that information, didn't see any of his bank accounts or investment statements, the only other method I can think of would be his tax returns, especially a Schedule B on which he would report distributions.

But I really don't know if you could get a copy of his returns from the IRS unless you had some authority to do so, and you might have to get that through Probate.

A Probate Judge can order your sister to provide documents addressing your father's assets, and can also order her to rescind her efforts and/or pay you your equal portion.

You might want to start checking law firms and think about hiring an estate planning attorney or elder attorney who specifically handles probate litigation to help you.
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Garden,RippedOff is the one who was taking care of her dad.
Sorry about your dad RippedOff and I hope you are able to follow some of the great advice you received from Garden.
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Sorry, I must have misunderstood. I do recall reading the post a few times to clarify that but must have missed that sentence. 97, thanks for that clarification.

That changes the situation. RippedOff, since you were taking care of your father, did you have access to all his financial records? Were you handling his finances? Preparing his tax returns? Do you have any account statements from companies or mutuals with which he held stock? Who made any notifications after his death to those companies with which he had assets?

If your sister was proxy under a POA and the stocks were titled in your father's name, she could have had authority to sell the stocks on his behalf, before he died. If she didn't have that authority, I don't know how she could have sold his stocks if he wasn't convinced to do it himself, as apparently occurred with the Apple stock.

Could you clarify the timeline of when you took care of him, and when your sister "conned" him into moving in with her? And how did you get evidence that she "took" $20K? Do you have written documentation of that transaction(s) that would provide proof of either undue influence or theft?
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My suggestion is to "let it go." When he was with you, why didn't you get a will ? The grief and anger is not healthy. You know you did the "right thing" and she did not. Unless you can afford an attorney to look in to it for you or try to research it yourself and file appropriate paperwork it seems like you should not let the anger consume you.
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Unfortunately, my dear, your sister is a; COLD-HEARTED-GREEDY- B - - C H!!!! I just can't type out the b-word to you!!!!! I don't know the laws, up there in Michigan, so all I know to tell you, CONTACT AN ATTORNEY THAT HANDLES MESSES LIKE THIS!!!! What I do know is this; in most states you are entitled to your share of your fathers ESTATE!!!! This is WHY you will need an attorney to straighten this mess out!!!! I don't see your sister working things out, with you, IN A FAIR WAY!!!!!! I, also, wish you GOOD LUCK, from me, a SENIOR CITIZEN WITH A WARM & CARING HEART, as I think you have!!!!! My prayers will be with you!!!! This, I do believe, would also be your fathers wishes, TOO!!!! A FRIEND!!!! p. s. You will need an, ELDERS ATTORNEY, and if you don't know one, go online to a site called: eldersattornies.com They will give you the names, addresses and phone numbers of these attorney's in your area!!!! This a SAFE SITE to log on to!!!!!
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People have given you advice on procedure, but as I understand the situation boils down to this. Someone else caused a problem, and you need a lawyer to figure out how to fix it. Hopefully the laws in your state will allow you to be made whole.
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People who'd do this are apparently everywhere, you hear the stories all the time! How do they live with themselves? Using the advice above, sounds to me like you want a lawyer indeed and maybe there's one who'll work for a portion of the proceeds. This may be a project, ripped, and one I hope you take on. Good luck.
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If you live in Ohio, I can help better than if you happen to live outside of Ohio. I'm handling my first state case for my own dad and what do you need to do is call your state bar association since your dad died intestate, meaning no will. The closest next of kin such as a spouse will be the first to get everything by law. If there's no surviving spouse but bio children, then the children get equal shares. If you're a new admin handling an estate for the first time, you'll definitely need a lawyer since they're so much you don't know so definitely get legal help on this one especially if you happen to be struggling financially. You'll want to come up with enough money to open the estate for your dad, you can either open it yourself or give the money to your lawyer who can do it for you. The process is long and it can be pretty scary  not hearing from your lawyer for long periods of time. What's even harder is if you're hurting financially and you happen to need money for something important like a big ticket item you absolutely need.  it could take months or years for the estate to settle if there's a complicated situation. In Ohio probate, I remember there was about a two months (approximately) for the fiduciary to admit the will to probate court. Since there was no will to admit the next step pad to be skipped. The next thing to come up was inventory where I currently am. If you let a lawyer help you, they have access to records you may not have access to. If your lawyer discovers fraud, they'll contact you and fill you in at some point. That's when you can ask questions and make suggestions. You may be surprised to find out if you and your lawyer are already on the same page with the same plan. The next step is to contact anyone involved if fraud was involved. This is usually done  by the lawyer who sends letters on your behalf to people involved. The lawyer may actually make multiple attempts to make contact before taking it up a notch and mentioning the possibility of further action. If that doesn't work then further action will be necessary and proper personnel will show up on the doorstep of the person who previously ignored your lawyer and they'll be served a subpoena to appear in court. A friend of mine just brought something to my attention today that I didn't know or realize with this particular type of case. She said that If a probate case makes it to court you may be asked not to discuss your case during that particular time. As of right now, my case has not yet gone to court but my friend did bring to my attention to watch who I talk to from this point on since there are bad people out there who don't have my best interest at heart. You may want to consider this same thing because there are some people out there who may cleverly take advantage of the situation for their own gain but I don't know how this is done, this is a mystery to me. Definitely gather information from necessary resources and forward any information you find it to your lawyer but don't hire anyone outside of your lawyer. Definitely warn people closest to you if fraud was discovered if you know anyone who happens to be up in age because you now have a duty to watch out for others if you ever faced a case where you were dealing with discovered fraud of a deceased relative. 

One important thing to remember is until you've actually dealt with some kind of unfortunate situation after a relative has died where inheritance was involved, you probably won't know enough to start your research on other situations just like yours. It would be a good idea to start learning now based on what you described here but learn all you can so that you have more info to share with others. It wasn't until I had to deal with my own case that I had to start researching similar cases and you might be surprised just how similar various cases really are but how different they can also be
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Contact an attorney.
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