Missing Parent Disqualified From Child's Estate

Twenty-five year old Seth passed away in a car accident and his father Fred filed a petition to become the Administrator of Seth's estate in Surrogate's Court.

The processing of the petition was delayed because Fred, who raised his two sons as a single parent, did not know the whereabouts of their mother Tina (who walked out on her family twenty years ago).

To complete the petition for Letters of Administration, Fred was required to list Tina as a fifty (50%) percent distributee of Seth's estate and request to dispense with service of process as her whereabouts were unknown (see Surrogate's Court Procedure Act section 1003.4). 

After collecting the estate assets (and seven months after the Letters of Administration were issued by the Surrogate's Court), Fred filed a Voluntary Judicial Accounting seeking settlement of his account as Administrator.  His application also sought the disqualification of Tina as a distributee based on abandonment and failure to provide for Seth when he was under the age of Twenty-one. 

The Surrogate's Court appointed a Guardian ad Litem to protect Tina's rights in the accounting procedure but ultimately, Tina was disqualified pursuant to EPTL section 4-1.4 and Fred was decreed the sole distributee of Seth's estate.