A Northampton County senior judge has upheld the wills filed by now-disbarred attorney John Karoly of South Whitehall following the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law in a 2007 plane crash, according to reports on lehighvalleylive.com and mcall.com.
John Karoly had law offices on N. 18th Street in South Whitehall but is now serving federal jail time on tax evasion offenses.
Karoly’s sisters had charged that the wills, dated 2006, that Karoly filed in Northampton County Court after the deaths were fraudulent. The sisters said they knew only of a 1985 will that left much of estate to them and not the 2006 wills that left the estate to nieces, nephews and John Karoly.
According to the reports, retired Bucks County President Judge Isaac Garb ruled the sisters had failed to establish that the 2006 wills were not valid.
A federal grand jury had accused John Karoly of fraudulently creating the 2006 wills for his late brother, Peter Karoly, also a lawyer, and his wife, Lauren Angstat, a dentist. The two were killed in a plane crash in Massachusetts. Prosecutors later dropped those charges in a plea bargain in the tax evasion case, with Karoly giving up his portion of the estate, according to the reports.
Attribution:
Court Upholds Wills John Karoly Filed in Brother’s Estate
A judge ruled Tuesday that sisters of now disbarred lawyer John Karoly Jr., whose law offices were in South Whitehall, did not prove wills forged, according to published reports.
Mary Ellen Alu
August 14, 2012
SouthWhitehallPatch.com
http://southwhitehall.patch.com/articles/court-upholds-wills-filed-by-john-karoly-for-brother-s-estate
Estate of Denial® provides news, analysis and commentary on abusive practices occurring in probate courts and via probate instruments (wills, trusts, guardianships, powers of attorney). We provide original perspective to educate the public regarding this growing threat to both individual freedoms and property rights.