Inheritance cash in dispute after demise of lady who made hundreds of thousands off sale of T-rex stays

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — For years, the the huge mostly-intact dinosaur skeleton that got here to be generally known as Sue the T-rex was on the middle of a authorized battle. The most recent dispute includes who inherits what’s left of the cash created by the sale of Sue.

Fossil hunters found the skeleton in 1990 on property owned by Maurice and Darlene Williams that sits on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. Due to the placement on the reservation, the invention led to years of courtroom battles over possession rights.

Finally, the couple was capable of declare the rights, and so they made $7.6 million from the public sale of Sue — now on display at Chicago’s Field Museum. The museum’s web site says that at greater than 40 toes (12.2 meters) lengthy and 13 toes (4 meters) tall on the hip, Sue is the most important Tyrannosaurus rex specimen found and essentially the most full.

Maurice Williams died in 2011. Darlene Williams later moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the place she died in December 2020. The couple had 4 youngsters and three of the siblings are concerned in a courtroom dispute over the property, KELO-TV reported.

On the middle of the dispute: Darlene Williams had two wills, in response to data filed in Lincoln County, South Dakota. The primary one, signed in 2017, included all of her youngsters and grandchildren, and listed daughter Sandra Williams Luther because the particular person in control of settling the property and ensuring the desire was carried out.

However a second will dated Nov. 25, 2020 — lower than three weeks earlier than Darlene Williams died — designated Luther as the only real inheritor and executor. The doc additionally cited Darlene Williams as saying that she had lived together with her youngsters at odds for too lengthy, and he or she hoped that in her demise they might discover peace and turn into a household once more.

One other daughter, Jacqueline Schwartz, questioned whether or not the second will was authorized. She mentioned her mom was critically in poor health and in hospice care when she signed the doc with out witnesses within the room as a result of COVID-19 restrictions.

Schwartz additionally contested the sale of her mom’s dwelling in Spearfish, South Dakota, two weeks earlier than her demise. Court docket data present that $225,000 in proceeds went to Darlene Williams’ son, Carson Williams.

No trial date has been set.