My wife's cousin recently passed away, he was an FID card holder and has two handguns, he has no immediate family only first cousins and left no will! My wife's brother is the executor of the estate and does not posses an FID card. So far he has found in the house a Smith&Wesson model 36 38 special and is still looking for a Colt 1911 commander, he did find paperwork for the .38 purchased sometime in the late 70's early 80's, to me it looks legit, purchased from an FFL, the Colt I do not know about yet, he has not found the pistol or the paper work.

I searched the web but did not come up with any results for this type of scenario.

My questions are, is it possible to have the pistols transferred to my wife or myself? Or, do we need to hand them in to the local PD?

The .38 found is pristine, I would assume when found the Colt will be also, would hate to have to loose them.

Thanks for any help.

2 hours ago, Redeye65 said:

My wife's cousin recently passed away, he was an FID card holder and has two handguns, he has no immediate family only first cousins and left no will! My wife's brother is the executor of the estate and does not posses an FID card. So far he has found in the house a Smith&Wesson model 36 38 special and is still looking for a Colt 1911 commander, he did find paperwork for the .38 purchased sometime in the late 70's early 80's, to me it looks legit, purchased from an FFL, the Colt I do not know about yet, he has not found the pistol or the paper work.

I searched the web but did not come up with any results for this type of scenario.

My questions are, is it possible to have the pistols transferred to my wife or myself? Or, do we need to hand them in to the local PD?

The .38 found is pristine, I would assume when found the Colt will be also, would hate to have to loose them.

Thanks for any help.

Who established your wife's brother to be executor? The state? 

I beleive your wife qualifies to inherit property from the estate not you, and the executor can dispurse the firearms to your wife as an inheritance. Without a will things can get messy, but its the executors job to figure out how the deceased property is used to pay debts or be inherited to those who qualify. 

Get a lawyer. There's more to this than just two guns.

1 hour ago, JackDaWack said:

Who established your wife's brother to be executor? The state? 

I beleive your wife qualifies to inherit property from the estate not you, and the executor can dispurse the firearms to your wife as an inheritance. Without a will things can get messy, but its the executors job to figure out how the deceased property is used to pay debts or be inherited to those who qualify. 

The deceased did on his death bed in front of family, there may also have been some sort of documentation stating this also, so far it looks like there are 16 in line for inheritance, some things like beneficiaries on accounts are cut and dry, but there is property and other accounts no one is listed on, which will be grouped into the estate and distributed equally among the 16. Some of the 16 may never be found, lawyer is collecting as much info from the family we can provide to start the skip trace. 
 

1 hour ago, siderman said:

Get a lawyer. There's more to this than just two guns.

Absolutely