What is an interested person?

Only an interested person may get involved in a Florida guardianship or estate. Are you in or out? Can you get the “keys” to the “courthouse door?” Or is someone preventing you from speaking out? Here is your “last and final“, “all-you-need-to-know” comprehensive commentary about what is an interested person.

What are you doing here?
Not everyone can participate in a Florida guardianship or probate.
You need some connection.
Some interest at stake: inheritance, rights, money, property ?
After all, let’s say that you and your spouse are going through a divorce. Can I come in to your lawsuit or proceeding and start filing motions ? How about a stranger’s breach of contract case? Of course not. I have no “standing“. I have no right to participate in a legal proceeding that has nothing to do with me.
Now, “standing” is different than an “indispensable party“. If someone files a lawsuit and does not join all indispensable parties, the suit could be dismissed.
When we talk about Florida probate and guardianships, what is an interested person?
” I want a say in this estate ! …. “
Well, whether one can participate in a guardianship or estate proceeding ( a Florida probate) turns on whether you are an interested person. Whether you have a sufficient legal or financial interest in the proceeding to be allowed to be heard, to participate and to ask a probate judge for relief or assistance.
This legal commentary will tell you what you need to know under two circumstances.
First, if you want to participate in an estate or guardianship proceeding and others are “fighting” you.
Second, if someone who should NOT be participating in a probate or an estate IS trying to participate. What can you do? You should seek to have them “removed” or prohibited from participating.
Before reading “what you need to know” below….. want to see what the 3rd District Court of Appeal says about this topic? Click on THIS LINK and scroll down to read the Rudnikas v. Gonzalez opinion.
Here’s what you need to know
- An interested person varies from case to case, fact to fact, probate to probate.
- Guardianship to guardianship — that’s right. Only interested persons can participate in a guardianship.
- A Florida probate judge has great discretion to determine who is an interested person.
- Read Florida Probate Statute 731.201 (23) which defines “interested person.”
- If someone is blocking you from participating in a probate, get in front of a judge and be heard. Get your standing established. If you lose, then appeal.
- And if someone who should NOT be doing things in your probate keeps filing things, file a motion to stop that. Ask the judge to make a determination that that person has no right to do anything, or file any papers.
- Remember: if an estate beneficiary has received her COMPLETE DISTRIBUTION….. they are satisfied in full and are no longer interested. So, after one receives what they are supposed to get, their involvement should stop. If it does not, hire a probate litigator to have that cease.