Annulment & Wills Fraud

From the Courthouse News Service:

    A man who married in secret by checking his allegedly incapacitated bride out of a nursing home may not be entitled to her estate, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled.
     Nancy Ellen Laubenheimer died at Virginia Highlands Health and Rehabilitation Center in February 2009 while her stepdaughter, Patricia Mudlaff, was petitioning for permanent guardianship.
     Though Laubenheimer had never adopted Mudlaff or her two siblings, she had been married to their father for 30 years before his death in 2001. Laubenheimer's will in 1999 said the bulk of her estate should go to those three children if her husband predeceased her.
     Joseph McLeod moved in with Laubenheimer some time later. Laubenheimer's failing health included a series of strokes, diabetes, renal failure and hypertension. Six months before Laubenheimer was judged by doctors as incapacitated and admitted to a nursing home in October 2008, a nurse had told the sheriff's department that a man named "Clark McLeod" was not letting Laubenheimer get the care she required.
     Laubenheimer had been in the nursing home just two or three weeks when McLeod removed her twice to obtain a marriage license and then get married at the courthouse.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn