Siblings fight over the estate of the mother whose land yielded a T. Rex skeleton

Darlene Williams died in 2020, more than a dozen years after selling an $8 million fossilized skeleton. a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue who was found in 1990 on her family’s farm in South Dakota.

Now her children are arguing over who should inherit her money, pointing to conflicting wills that Mrs. Williams left, including a document she signed shortly before her death.

It’s the latest legal dispute spawned by Sue, a crown jewel of paleontology that is believed to be the most complete T. rex fossil ever found. The bones have been at the center of lawsuits ever since fossil hunters found the 67-million-year-old Jurassic-era gem.

Before her death in 2020, Ms Williams had written two wills.

In a 2017 will, she named one of her daughters, Sandra Williams Luther, as personal representative of her estate. In another will, written in 2020, she named that same daughter as her sole heir and the sole executor of her estate.

“Please don’t fight among all of you,” the 2020 will read. “I have lived at odds with my children for too many years.”

But another daughter, Jaqueline Schwartz, has argued in court that the second will is not legitimate and that it is legally flawed.

According to Ms. Schwartz’s objection, just days before the 2020 will was dated, her mother was “seriously ill” and admitted to a hospital. When Ms. Schwartz visited, her mother was “floating in and out of consciousness” and “could barely speak,” according to the court papers.

Ms Schwartz has argued that her mother was ‘susceptible to undue influence’ due to low oxygen levels and severe anemia, which made it difficult for her to communicate, and that only one visitor was allowed at a time in line with coronavirus pandemic restrictions .

In February, Ms. Schwartz filed another petition, asking a court for permission to pursue claims against Ms. Luther and another sibling, Carson Williams, for what Ms. Schwartz said was the mismanagement of her mother’s funds .

Less than two weeks before her mother’s death, Ms. Williams appeared to have sold her home, Ms. Schwartz’s petition said, but her mother’s signature on the settlement documents did not match those of others.

The proceeds from the sale of the house, which amounted to approximately $225,000 as reported by The Associated Press, were intended to go to Darlene Williams, and after her death, to her estate, according to the petition.

Instead, Ms. Schwartz has said, they were “converted and embezzled” by Ms. Luther and Mr. Williams, who worked together to enrich themselves after their mother’s death.

Attorneys for the siblings did not respond to multiple requests for comment Friday and Saturday. It is not clear how much each sibling could have gained from their mother’s estate.

The T. rex fossil unearthed on the family farm was named Sue, after Sue Hendrickson, the woman who discovered it during a commercial excavation trip. It took six people 17 days to remove the skeleton. According to the growth rings in the bones, the dinosaur is estimated to have lived about 28 years.

Its discovery led to a five-year custody dispute that ended at public auction in 1997. according to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

The museum acquired the bones in 1990 for $8.36 million and now displays the skeleton, which measures more than 40 feet long and 13 feet high. The museum has 250 of the approximately 380 bones.

The skeleton “is the most celebrated representative of T. rex and perhaps the most famous fossil in the world,” can be found on the museum’s websiteadding that it has “enabled scientists around the world to conduct more detailed research into the species’ evolutionary relationships, biology, growth and behavior than ever before.”