Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
Is there a probate open? Who is in charge of the estate? While Pi Phi might tell you to donate the badges (and that would be great), doing so could end up costing you. Was there a will? Is there a trust? How did you come back into possession of the jewelry? If your cousins "stole" it, why do you have it now? You need to run this stuff by a lawyer in your state because while I respect the hell out of everyone in this thread, I don't see a lot of expertise in probate law here except navane. She's apparently on the same page I am. Definitely not enough information here, and you are in danger of being in the legal weeds.
And as far as badges not being jewelry and being the property of the national organization, that's a bunch of bullshit. Badges sell on Ebay all the time, sometimes for big bucks. While organizations might say that badges are the property of the organization, a court of law is probably going to take a different view. I own a jeweled badge which I paid good money for. I bought it from an authorized vendor. It is definitely not the property of Sigma Nu, though I will probably will it back to the chapter.
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My grandmother didn't view them as jewellery. The will personally specified me as the recipient and the jewellery box was not recovered until now because my cousin lives in the same town as my grandma and had the opportunity to take what she wanted when we were all more preoccupied with things other than money, we came back into possession because my cousin's husband called another one of my cousins to ask if she had any claim on the jewellery (which she did), and my grandmother's lawyer has cleared me on everything but figuring out how to distribute the badges.