Probate Litigation - Probate Exception

This Probate Litigation Jurisdiction information comes from an article in an ABA journal article that can be found here. It discusses how it is now expected that there will be an increased amount of Probate Estate Litigation in federal court following the Anna Nicole Smith will contest and trust dispute having been decided by the Supreme Court as part of the ongoing inheritance litigation dispute case.

Writing for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the Probate exception didn’t apply because the case involved issues normally disputed in federal court. Marshall v. Marshall, No. 04-1544. The Supreme Court ruling puts Smith, whose legal name is Vickie Lynn Marshall, back in court to seek a $474 million inheritance judgment she previously won in federal bankruptcy court in California, according to her lawyer, Kent L. Richland of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, even those on the other side expect the Supreme Court decision in Smith’s case to open federal courtroom doors to a deluge of new probate estate-related litigation."I think it’s going to be read primarily by litigators and it’s going to create another new litigation opportunity," says James R. Wade, a Denver lawyer and former probate judge who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National College of Probate Judges. "I think that the litigators are going to see opportunities which they hadn’t even thought of before of bringing probate cases in federal court."