{"id":7957,"date":"2021-10-28T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T10:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/?p=7957"},"modified":"2021-10-23T20:10:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-23T20:10:42","slug":"illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. However, she had several close, loving friends who knew her for decades and helped care for her as she sank into dementia. After an unsuccessful search for heirs, the plenary guardian of her estate after her guardianship was established and received authority from a Cook County judge to deviate from the intestacy statute by creating a trust and will that benefited the friends and several charities. However, ten supposed heirs surfaced after Mivelaz died.<\/p>\n<p>The principal question in this case for the Illinois Appellate Court was the alleged heirs, who challenged the estate-plan order, arguing that it was void because they weren\u2019t notified of the proceeding. Further, the alleged heirs argued that the guardianship judge no longer had subject matter jurisdiction based on the Illinois Supreme Court case of <em>In re <a href=\"https:\/\/casetext.com\/case\/in-re-gebis\">Estate of Gebis<\/a><\/em>, 186 Ill.2d 188 (1999).<\/p>\n<p>Although the Illinois Appellate Court concluded that the guardianship court had constitutional authority to adjudicate the alleged heirs\u2019 attack on the trust and will, the First District affirmed because (1) the guardian conducted a reasonably thorough search for relatives and heirs and (2) unknown heirs received adequate notification by publication and service on the Cook County State\u2019s Attorney.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/#more-7957\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. However, she had several close, loving friends who knew her for decades and helped care for her as she sank into dementia. After an unsuccessful search for heirs, the plenary guardian of her estate after her guardianship [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":795,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guardianships","category-probate-litigation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals &#8212; Chicago Injury Lawyer Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. However, she had several close, loving friends\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals &#8212; Chicago Injury Lawyer Blog\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. However, she had several close, loving friends\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Robert Kreisman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals &#8212; Chicago Injury Lawyer Blog","description":"Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. 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However, she had several close, loving friends","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Robert Kreisman","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/"},"author":{"name":"Robert Kreisman","@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/#\/schema\/person\/5e5596abf7be77fdabc788f0a78f042b"},"headline":"Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals","datePublished":"2021-10-28T10:00:41+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/"},"wordCount":1175,"articleSection":["Guardianships","Probate Litigation"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/","url":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/illinois-appellate-court-affirms-distribution-of-9-million-estate-to-unrelated-individuals\/","name":"Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Distribution of $9 Million Estate to Unrelated Individuals &#8212; Chicago Injury Lawyer Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/#website"},"datePublished":"2021-10-28T10:00:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.robertkreisman.com\/injury-lawyer\/#\/schema\/person\/5e5596abf7be77fdabc788f0a78f042b"},"description":"Audrey Mivelaz had $9 million in assets and no estate plan, no testamentary capacity and no known heirs. 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