Order of death
Further to my blog Wednesday about the tragic situations that can be caused by mental illness and disability and Thursday about the unpredictability of Estate litigation, the Chris Benoit murder-suicide tragedy has elements of both.
Benoit apparently murdered his wife, then his son, then killed himself. Depending on the truth of those allegations and verification of timing, very different consequences prevail in terms of the division of Benoit’s property and that of his wife.
Neither parent left a Will, but Benoit did leave children living in Canada from a prior marriage, and his wife was survived by her mother. I recall from early news reports considerable speculation about the little boy having had a developmental delay due to a genetic disorder, but that aspect seems to have been set aside by the media.
If the child was killed first, then, at least as reported, under Georgia law the mother apparently would inherit Benoit’s estate. Apparently some of her estate (though perhaps not all) would in then in turn be inherited by her mother, or so her lawyers were arguing.
If the mother died first, then Benoit’s children from the prior marriage would be the beneficiaries.
In cases as tragic as this one, the monetary ramifications can seem awfully unimportant to the reader, but not, I suppose, to those left behind.
Thanks for reading, sad though some of my blogs this week may have been.
