These notes ^ and the others speculating about the disposition of the will, and the assets, and the bodies, are generally not exactly wrong, but they are omitting vital pieces of information that bear strongly on an understanding of what is obviously happening. Please let me include a bit more info, and offer some clarification.
1 GH and BA are entirely separate estates and bodies, with their own independent choices made. I am going to refer to GH in explaining, but same is true for her.
2 "What to do about GH's body" is not an item handled by his will and a probate - those cover the retitling of assets left behind in GH's name (or personal items of his with no particular ownership title on them), which now need a different owner. OTOH, a dead body itself (or cremated remains) are not owned by any person.
Someone will be given the control of their disposition. There is likely a document that GH did covering the disposition of his remains and who he authorized to make those decisions, with alternates as needed. If no such doc was done, his "closest living kin" would be the default decision-maker(s).
4 The determination of whether a formal probate of $50,000 plus in assets is necessary is a question that handles itself, and the court allows the designated Executor of the will (in this case, an attorney) to file it as informal probate (in practical terms, no probate) if they expect there are minimal assets that are being handled by the will. That's what the reporting suggests.
5 What if there are really way more GH-titled assets to be handled by a probate? Again, that question is answered by itself -- is the court being presented with GH assets to retitle that exceed that number? The executor should have a good feel on what they will need retitled at some point (if anything) so there's not an incentive to leave things out (which are then stuck in ownership of GH who is dead).
6 Note also that assets "handled by the will" are going to end up owned and handled by the GH Trust anyhow, and those placed in charge of it, because the ony named beneficiary of the will is the GH Trust. So there's not really a conflict over what is handled by the will (if anything) vs the trust.
7 It's also common for such a trust to designate a disinheriting of anyone who contests the estate. So in light of the smaller limit of assets being handled by the will, there's not much incentive to bother to contest it.
8 Legally the state is going to want to honor GH's wishes of what he wanted to do with his assets, and the only question will be whether these were truly his wishes. But considering GH has had this trust in place for decades, that question won't be much in doubt.
9 There does seem to be plenty of indication that GH did want to leave a substantial sum to family members, and perhaps the vast bulk of his estate.
10 As for BA's assets, it appears they are set up to be administered by the attorney or some other hired trustee, and used for the continued care of her mom, until her mom passes.
www.nbcnews.com
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.dailymail.co.uk
