← The Probate Archive
— Collection · 60 cases
The Florida files
Florida is where America's wealth comes to retire, and where a good deal of it ends up in litigation. No state estate tax, a constitutional homestead rule unlike anywhere else, and a probate bar that sees more contested estates per capita than almost anywhere in the country.
Two trips to the Supreme Court· 10-min readFlorida
Anna Nicole Smith
A fourteen-month marriage to an 89-year-old oil billionaire produced nineteen years of litigation, two United States Supreme Court opinions that first-year law students still read, and — in the end — nothing at all.
The dog that got $12 million· 8-min readFlorida
Leona Helmsley
She left two grandchildren nothing and a Maltese named Trouble twelve million dollars. A Manhattan judge cut the dog to $2M and gave the grandchildren $6M. Then Trouble retired to a hotel in Sarasota with a security detail.
Two co-trustees, one Margaritaville· 8-min readStill openFlorida
Jimmy Buffett
He left $275 million in a trust for his widow and named her to run it alongside his longtime financial adviser. Neither can act without the other, neither can remove the other, and as of 2026 they are still in court in Palm Beach County.
The $24.6 million fee· 8-min readFlorida
Robert Rauschenberg
Three friends administered an artist's trust on Captiva Island and asked for $60 million. His own foundation said $375,000. A Lee County judge said $24.6 million — and Florida's appellate court affirmed, in the case that still governs what a trustee's work is worth here.
The greatest hitter, frozen in Arizona· 8-min readFlorida
Ted Williams
His will said cremate him and scatter the ashes off the Florida coast. Two days after he died in Florida, his son had the body flown to a cryonics facility in Arizona — on the strength of a note scrawled on a scrap of paper. The family went to war over it for two years.
The best-timed death in American tax history· 7-min readFlorida
George Steinbrenner
For exactly one year — 2010 — the federal estate tax did not exist. The Yankees owner died in Tampa on July 13th of that year, with a fortune reported above a billion dollars, and his heirs paid nothing.
The $30 million he could not keep· 9-min readFlorida
Abraham Shakespeare
A Lakeland truck driver's assistant won a $30 million Florida Lotto jackpot in 2006 and took $17 million in cash. Within three years the money was gone, his house was titled to someone else's company, and he was dead. The estate spent four more years getting the house back for his two sons.
Convicted of paperwork· 9-min readFlorida
Al Capone
The federal government never proved Al Capone did the things he is remembered for. It proved he had not paid his income tax. He died on Palm Island in Miami Beach in 1947 still owing that government money — and the house everyone calls Capone's mansion was bought in his wife's name.
The $2 form that cost a fortune· 9-min readFlorida
Aldrich v. Basile
Ann Aldrich wrote her own will on an E-Z Legal Form and listed every asset she owned. Then she inherited more. Because the form had no line for a residuary clause, the new property went to two nieces she had never named — and the Florida Supreme Court said that was correct.
The trust that ran Florida· 10-min readFlorida
Alfred I. duPont & Ed Ball
Alfred I. du Pont died outside Jacksonville in 1935 and left almost everything to a trust for crippled children. His brother-in-law ran it for the next 46 years — a bank chain, a railroad, a paper company, half the Panhandle — until Congress amended the banking laws to make him choose.
The estate that worked· 8-min readFlorida
Arnold Palmer
In the twelve months after he died, Arnold Palmer's estate earned about $40 million — roughly what he had earned in his last year alive. Thirty-nine licensees, a drink most Americans think is a beverage rather than a man, and no public estate fight at all. This archive is mostly failures. This is the other kind.
The twins born eighteen months late· 9-min readFlorida
Astrue v. Capato
Robert Capato banked sperm before chemotherapy and died in Florida in 2002. His widow gave birth to twins in September 2003. The Supreme Court held 9–0 that whether they were his “children” for Social Security purposes depended on Florida's intestacy statute — and Florida's answer was no.
The gift with three keys· 8-min readFlorida
Bebe Rebozo
Richard Nixon's closest friend left roughly 65% of his estate — about $19 million — to the Nixon Library, on the condition that the spending be approved by Nixon's two daughters and one other friend. The money sat for four years while the approvers disagreed, and a Miami judge finally ordered them into a room together.
The contract that outran the will· 8-min readFlorida
Blechman v. Estate of Blechman
Bertram Blechman amended his revocable trust to leave his partner half the income from a family LLC. He had signed an operating agreement four years earlier saying his interest would vest in his children the moment he died. Florida's Fourth District held the contract got there first — and that the interest was never an estate asset at all.
Died in Miami, judged in Kingston· 10-min readFlorida
Bob Marley
He died in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981, at 36, with no will — he considered writing one an unseemly interest in death. Jamaican law then divided his estate, a New York jury heard a RICO case about it, and a Florida-appointed ancillary administrator spent a decade recovering what had gone missing.
“I intentionally omit him”· 8-min readFlorida
Burt Reynolds
The will filed after his death in Jupiter, Florida said in plain words that his only son was left out of it. Every headline ran with that. The next clause of the same sentence explained why, and it was the opposite of what the headlines said.
The judgment outlives the defendant· 10-min readFlorida
Claims against the estate
In Florida, no cause of action dies with the person. What kills most claims against a dead defendant is not a defence — it is a calendar. Three months from a newspaper notice, and an absolute two years from the date of death that nobody can extend.
A membership, a policy, and a trust· 9-min readFlorida
Cryonics contracts
Cryonics is not a bequest and it is not a burial. It is a contract signed while you are alive, funded by a life insurance policy that names the organisation as beneficiary, with the long-term costs held in a separate trust. The legal problems are all in the paperwork.
As near as possible· 10-min readFlorida
Cy pres
You leave money to a charity that no longer exists, or on a condition nobody can meet. The gift does not simply evaporate — a court can redirect it to the nearest charitable purpose you would have wanted. Florida codified that power in §736.0413, and its courts have used it on a wildlife society that never existed and on Janet Reno's homestead.
Thirty-three photographs· 9-min readFlorida
Dale Earnhardt
He died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Within six weeks his widow had gone to a Volusia County courtroom, then to the Florida Legislature, and Florida had a new public-records law with his family's name on it. It still governs every death in the state.
The crime that happens inside the family· 9-min readFlorida
Exploitation of the elderly
Florida wrote a separate felony for taking an older person's money from a position of trust. It is graded by dollar value, it reaches the power of attorney and the joint account, and it comes with a reporting duty that lands on bankers and nurses before it ever reaches a prosecutor.
The trap and the shield· 10-min readFlorida
Florida homestead
No dollar cap. No forced sale. The most generous homestead protection in the country — and a constitutional restriction that can quietly void the single most important gift in your will. Three Florida appellate decisions show exactly how the same clause does both jobs.
When the government claims the inheritance· 10-min readFlorida
Forfeiture and the estate
A forfeiture is not a creditor's claim. It is an assertion that the property was never lawfully the decedent's — with title dating back to the day of the offence, not the day of the seizure. It runs on its own clock, in its own court, and an estate that ignores it loses by default.
What survives the marriage· 10-min readFlorida
Frozen embryo disputes
Cryopreservation created a category of property, or person, or neither, that outlasts the relationship that made it. Three decisions — Tennessee 1992, New York 1998, Alabama 2024 — answer the question three different ways. Florida answered it by statute in 1993.
The chihuahua with the Escalade· 8-min readFlorida
Gail Posner
A Miami Beach heiress left her waterfront mansion and a reported $3 million trust to three dogs, and roughly $26 million to the household staff who cared for them. Her son received $1 million and filed suit. The house sold for $8.4 million.
The test is the relationship, not the recipient· 10-min readFlorida
Gifts to religious organisations
A relative discovers that most of an estate went to a congregation. The instinct is to argue about the organisation. Florida courts do not. They ask three questions about relationship, benefit, and procurement — and the answers would be identical if the recipient were a university, a caregiver, or a nephew.
The countess who never existed· 8-min readFlorida
Gunther the German Shepherd
For thirty years a line of German Shepherds has been reported as the richest dog on earth, heir to a German countess. Reporters checked. There is no countess. There never was. The dog does, however, own a mansion on Brickell Avenue — which is a different and more interesting fact.
The estate with no paper trail· 8-min readFlorida
H. Wayne Huizenga
He built three Fortune 500 companies and owned three professional sports franchises. Forbes put him at $2.8 billion. When he died in Fort Lauderdale in 2018, the public record produced a probate file, a deed, and an auction result — and essentially nothing else. That is not an accident. It is Florida law working as designed.
The law written for one marriage· 9-min readFlorida
Henry Flagler
Flagler built Standard Oil with Rockefeller, then built Florida — the railway, Palm Beach, Miami, Key West. In 1901 the Florida legislature made incurable insanity a ground for divorce. He was the only person ever divorced under it. It was repealed in 1905.
The seven warning signals· 9-min readFlorida
In re Estate of Carpenter
A Florida widow signed a will four days before she died, leaving everything to the daughter who had arranged it and nothing to her three sons. The Supreme Court of Florida used the case to write the list of warning signs that every Florida will contest has been argued around ever since.
The house nobody could afford to keep· 8-min readFlorida
James Deering
Deering spent a reported $15 million building a Renaissance villa on Biscayne Bay, then died in 1925 with no wife and no children. His two nieces inherited 180 acres of Miami waterfront and spent twenty-seven years working out how to get rid of it.
One lawyer, three jobs· 9-min readFlorida
Joe DiMaggio
DiMaggio died in Hollywood, Florida in 1999. The lawyer who had represented him for two decades was named personal representative, initial trustee, and the person who would control the licensing of his name — all in a will that lawyer's own office was involved in producing. Then came the books, the tapes, and a federal grand jury.
An NFL team, and no cash· 9-min readFlorida
Joe Robbie
He founded the Miami Dolphins and built the first entirely privately financed stadium in America. He died owning almost all of both and almost nothing liquid. Within four years the family had sold the team, the stadium, and the name on the building.
“You fellows will have to figure out how to spend it”· 8-min readFlorida
John D. MacArthur
He ran an insurance empire and 100,000 Florida acres from a corner table in a Singer Island hotel coffee shop. When he died in West Palm Beach in 1978, ninety-two percent of it went to a foundation he had given almost no instructions to. Three years later it invented the genius grant.
Ten minutes that outrank your will· 10-min readFlorida
Legacy contacts and memorialisation
Apple, Google and Facebook each let you name who gets into your account after you die. Under Florida law those settings beat your will, your trust, and your power of attorney. Almost nobody sets them.
The house nobody would take· 9-min readFlorida
Marjorie Merriweather Post
She left Mar-a-Lago to the United States as a winter White House, Hillwood to the Smithsonian, and Camp Topridge to New York State. All three institutions handed the gifts back. The richest woman in America could not give her houses away.
The estate she gave away first· 8-min readFlorida
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
She died in Coconut Grove at 108 with no spouse and no children — the profile that usually produces a mess. It did not, because she had already handed over her papers in 1987 and her cottage in 1991, and left written instructions for her ashes. Almost nothing was left to fight about.
The fortune nobody could find· 9-min readFlorida
Meyer Lansky
Federal investigators spent decades certain that Meyer Lansky had roughly $300 million hidden offshore. He died in Miami Beach in 1983, and what anyone could actually document was a bank balance under $35,000. Reputed wealth and provable assets are different things. Probate only deals in the second.
Forty-two, and no warning· 8-min readFlorida
Payne Stewart
Stewart won the US Open in June 1999 and was dead by October, at 42, in an aircraft accident that made no sense and gave nobody any time. What follows a death like that is not a will contest. It is a wrongful death action, and in Florida only one person on earth is allowed to file it.
The guardianship scandal· 10-min readFlorida
Rebecca Fierle
She held the largest professional guardianship practice in Florida — more than 400 wards across 19 counties. One ward's death in a Tampa hospital in 2019 unwound all of it, and produced a statewide investigation, a criminal case, and a rewrite of Chapter 744.
The death nobody mentioned· 9-min readFlorida
Schilling v. Herrera
Mignonne Schilling died in Miami in August 2004. Her brother — the sole beneficiary of her 1996 will — was not told until December 6, four days after her caregiver had petitioned to close the probate. By then there was nothing to contest. So he sued in tort instead, and Florida's Third District let him.
Five minutes is enough· 9-min readFlorida
Simultaneous death
Two people die in the same accident and nobody can prove who went first. Most states solved this by requiring an heir to outlive the decedent by 120 hours. Florida did not. Here, surviving by five provable minutes moves an entire estate into somebody else's family.
Selling the story· 9-min readFlorida
Son of Sam laws
New York wrote its law the day after David Berkowitz was arrested, and the Supreme Court struck it down fourteen years later — not because compensating victims is illegitimate, but because a statute that taxes speech by its subject reaches Thoreau and Saint Augustine too. Florida's version, from the same year, is still in the statute book.
The money was never the problem· 10-min readFlorida
Sudden wealth collapse
A study of Florida Lottery winners found that a six-figure prize postponed bankruptcy rather than preventing it. A peer-reviewed study of NFL draftees found one in six filed within twelve years of retirement. The pattern is not carelessness. It is four missing structures.
At least 2,500 dead, and almost no estates· 9-min readFlorida
The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane
The dike failed on the night of September 16, 1928, and the south shore of Lake Okeechobee went under. It remains the deadliest disaster in Florida history. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves, most were never identified, and almost none of them ever had an estate opened.
The one decision your family cannot reverse· 9-min readFlorida
The Anatomical Gift Act
Almost everything you write down about your death is advisory. A Florida anatomical gift is not. Once the donor has made it, the statute says a family member, guardian, or health care surrogate may not modify, deny, or prevent it — and after death it is irrevocable.
A promise to give, after you are gone· 9-min readFlorida
The charitable pledge
You sign a pledge card for $100,000. You die having paid $20,000. Can the charity collect the rest from your estate? In New York, Cardozo said yes on facts thinner than these. In Florida, the Supreme Court said no — and set out exactly what a pledge must contain to survive.
Who keeps the building· 10-min readStill openFlorida
The church split
A congregation divides. Both halves claim the sanctuary, the parking lot, and the endowment. The US Supreme Court has told states they may resolve this two different ways — and in April 2026 a Florida appellate court held that Florida still uses the older one, then asked the Florida Supreme Court whether it should.
Standing, and who actually gets it· 9-min readFlorida
The disappointed charity
A grandchild left out of a trust often cannot get into court at all. A charity named in the same document usually can. The reason is a definition in Florida's trust code — and behind it stands an Attorney General with statutory power to sue on behalf of gifts nobody else is watching.
Chapter 740, and the three-tier rule· 10-min readFlorida
The Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act
Florida wrote down exactly how a personal representative, trustee, or agent gets lawful access to a dead or incapacitated person's email, photos, and accounts. It is one short chapter, it has been law since 2016, and almost nobody uses the ten-minute step that sits at the top of it.
What a company is worth on the day nobody can run it· 10-min readFlorida
The founder with no successor
The owner dies. The estate tax is due in nine months, in cash. The personal representative has four months of statutory authority to keep the business trading. The buyer knows all of this. This is the most common six-figure mistake in Florida estate planning, and it is entirely preventable.
Seventy-eight years, three generations, one surname· 10-min readFlorida
The France family
NASCAR is not a league. It is a private company in Daytona Beach that has been owned and run by one family since 1948, through two deaths, one abrupt departure, and a $2 billion move to take the public half private. In April 2026 the CEO's name stopped being France.
Twenty-nine years is a long time to stay alive· 9-min readFlorida
The lottery annuity after death
Take the annuity and the state owes you thirty payments over twenty-nine years. Die in year six and the remaining twenty-four are an asset of your estate — taxable at their present value, non-assignable without a judge, and paid on a schedule nobody can accelerate.
You cannot pay them, and you cannot skip them· 9-min readFlorida
The missing heir
A brother nobody has spoken to since 1994. A cousin last known to be in Ontario. A named beneficiary who simply cannot be found. A Florida personal representative may not distribute their share to anyone else, and may not close the estate without them. There is a procedure, and it is four steps long.
Knowing it is not the same as being allowed to use it· 10-min readFlorida
The password problem
The most common digital estate plan in America is a spouse who knows the passwords. It fails on the two-factor code, it fails when the phone line is cancelled, and in the worst case it puts a grieving person on the wrong side of a felony statute.
Five years, or one specific peril· 9-min readFlorida
The presumption of death
Probate needs a dead person. When there is no body, no death certificate and no explanation, Florida supplies one by presumption: five continuous years of unexplained absence after a diligent search. Exposure to a specific peril can cut the five years to nothing.
A killer inherits nothing· 9-min readFlorida
The slayer rule
It began with a sixteen-year-old who poisoned his grandfather to stop him changing his will, and a New York court that refused to let the statute produce that result. Florida now writes it down: §732.802. It reaches wills, intestacy, joint property, and life insurance — and it does not require a criminal conviction.
Where the dog lives· 10-min readFlorida
The snowbird domicile fight
You can move to Florida and still owe New York. Domicile and residency are two different tests, states apply both, and auditors decide the first one by asking where you keep the things you would grab in a fire — the photographs, the jewellery, the dog. One Illinois couple fought a $1.8 million assessment over a fourteen-day difference and won.
When nobody comes forward· 9-min readFlorida
The unclaimed body
Florida has a written answer for what happens when a person dies and no one claims them. It runs through a hierarchy that ends with the words “or a friend or other person,” a medical examiner, an anatomical board, and — if all of that fails — a county commission.
Two billion dollars nobody has asked for· 9-min readFlorida
The unclaimed estate
Florida runs two entirely separate systems for money without an owner, and they have opposite deadlines. Escheated estate proceeds are gone after ten years. Unclaimed property is claimable forever. Almost nobody knows which one holds their money.
— Other collections
These are not our cases. Everything on this page is drawn from published court records and news reporting, cited below. It is general information about how probate and trust law works — not legal advice, and not a prediction about any case. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Other states' law differs from Florida's, which is usually the whole point of the story.