Disinheriting a child

Dear Len & Rosie,

My elderly mother recently passed. I am trustee and only beneficiary of her trust. I have a sister, who I have not seen or heard from in 40 years when she said she hated all of us and never wanted anything to do with us again. She even gave up her five-year-old son for strangers to adopt and would not let my parents adopt him. In the last few years she has visited my mother a few times a year. Now she has retained a lawyer to challenge the trust. Her court petition states that my mother was insane and that I committed elder abuse by forcing her into making this trust, but my mother left her out of the trust because of what she did in regards to their only grandchild and how she treated her and my father.

Bobbie

 

Disinheritance

Dear Len & Rosie,

My recently deceased brother had a daughter thirty years ago. He and his wife divorced within her first year of her life. Apparently, my brother's daughter was adopted by her mother's second husband after she remarried.  Would this daughter be legally entitled to any part of my brother's estate or his trust? My brother had a living trust and didn't want to leave anything to her, but the trust didn't specifically name her and exclude her from an inheritance. Instead, the trust says, "I have purposefully omitted any other relatives from any and all distributions." Is this a problem?

Nancy