In the last couple of diary entries I talked about losing my brother-in-law. As of this writing, we still don't know the cause of death. To recap, on Sunday, Sept 30, 2012 my husband received a phone call from his youngest brother who lives in Hawaii. I was in the room when he took the call.
I heard him say, "Oh no -- wait are you talking about our brother Dave?" That's how my husband discovered that his brother Dave had passed away. Dave, who lived in Henderson, Nevada -- was not married and didn't have any children. He lived alone. Apparently he died -- sitting in his recliner -- at some point between Sept 22 and the day he was discovered. More than likely, he was dead for about a week before he was found.
My husband and I live in Los Angeles. We drove to Henderson on Tuesday, Oct 2nd. The body had been removed from the house by the coroner two days before. We arrived at the house and met my other brother-in-law (the one who discovered the body). There were four brothers. Now there are three.
Over the next three days we cleaned up the place a bit -- there were thousands of dead flies and larvae encasements that had to be removed. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. I did not call a professional cleaning service. I was able to handle it.
Then we started trying to sift through Dave's paperwork to find a will. We found paid bills dating back to 1994 and enough paperwork to fill several file cabinets but no will was found.
I found a probate attorney. We had a telephone consultation and scheduled a face-to-face meeting.
We then contacted the coroner to ask when we'd know the cause of death. An autopsy has been preformed but toxicology reports take about 6-8 weeks to be complete. The cause of death along with the death certificate won't be available for several weeks.
Because Dave was not married, didn't have any children and there doesn't seem to be a will, everything is delayed -- this includes the disposition of his body which is currently at a mortuary.
According to Nevada statutes, after a spouse and children, the next in the line of succession to make decisions about the body and the assets is the decedents parents.
My mother and father-in-law are 90 and 95 yrs old respectively. They've been divorced for more than 40 years. My mother-in-law is in a Alzheimer's Care Facility but has not been deemed mentally incompetent by a judge. My father-in-law is in an independent living senior community -- he is mentally sharp.
I'll write more about this later. For now -- All I can say is, get a will.