My husband and I are joint tenants on my husband's grandmother's safe deposit box. The contents were not included in her will. She had told us she wanted to keep what was in the box separate from her will, so that we could have it after she died, but the executor of her estate found the keys and was able to access the safe deposit box and distribute the contents as tangible property to his mother. Is this legal? Is there anything we can do?
Safe deposit box laws vary from state to state. Whether it was appropriate for the estate representative to access the box, cannot be stated here. In some states the estate would retain an interest; in others, it would not.
The fact that her property was in the safe deposit box, though, doesn't change its ownership. A safe deposit box is nothing more than a storage area. It doesn't change the ownership of whatever it contains. Whatever was in the box still belonged to her estate unless she had actually made a gift of it to you before she died.
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Safe deposit box laws vary from state to state. Whether it was appropriate for the estate representative to access the box, cannot be stated here. In some states the estate would retain an interest; in others, it would not.