My father in law recently lost his wife of a little over a year. He found a safe deposit box in their names with 93,000 shares of AT&T , Lucent and Bell south stocks. He is unsure how to transfer these stocks into his name. What should he do to begin the process?

Did she leave a will? If not did she have any other heirs? The estate will need to be submitted for probate. The estate representative or executor will then be able to transfer the shares to the heirs.

Agreed, it will need to go though probate and the estate will have to establish proper heir. Then they can be transferred.

I moved this to Family Law from Investing since it's a legal question not an investing one. If there was no will, then we need to know the general locale to see what the laws of inheritance are.

Presumably the shares are in the name of the deceased wife?

OP needs to speak with a good probate attorney ASAP. We are talking about a lot of money here.

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We are talking about a lot of money here.

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At the current price 93,000 shares of AT&T stock is worth over $3.2 million. I think your father-in-law can afford a good attorney.

I am just curious, if the wife didn't leave a will, then how the assets get divided? Just curious...

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I am just curious, if the wife didn't leave a will, then how the assets get divided? Just curious...

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We don't know if the assets were divided. Unless the OP decides to return and enlighten us we will continue to be curious.

In the US, they get divided according to the 'intestate' laws of the state the deceased resided in at the time of death.
Many if not most states give something like half to the spouse, and divide the rest equally among surviving children. That's the simple version. It's easy to find 'intestate laws of X state' online.

The safe deposit box in BOTH NAMES might put a different spin on this, however, and the spouse might get everything in the box, if there is no will.

To the OP - unfortunately the stock certificates are obsolete, as BellSouth, Lucent and AT&T Corp have all been bought out or combined with other companies and new stock certificates were issued. Lucent is now Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T Corp. was merged with SBC and the combined entity was renamed AT&T Inc., and BellSouth is now part of Verizon. If you have a stock broker you trust you might ask him/her how to convert these obsolete share certificates into the new stock. Otherwise, contact investor services at AT&T Inc, Alcatel-Lucent, and Verizon to ask about converting them. My expectation is that they will each require a copy of the Death Certificate plus Letters testamentary from the probate court that document your father-in-law have the authority to change ownership of these certificates.

Given the size of this estate I would strongly advise that your father-in-law hire an attorney to help him through the probate process, especially if your step mother had children from a previous marriage.

ebaines makes an interesting point here. I knew the names of those companies represented entities no longer in existence. So the possibility exists that the shares were converted some time in the past and those obsolete certificates are no longer valid. But the OP won't know until a stock broker is consulted and/or the successor firms contacted.


As noted, the f-I-l will have to prove he is entitled to those shares.

Sounds like the box was in both of their names but we don't know who owns the stocks.

Stock isn't always converted. I had a little General Motors until 4 years ago. It's worthless. Apparently they issued new stock.

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Stock isn't always converted. I had a little General Motors until 4 years ago. It's worthless. Apparently they issued new stock.

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I very strongly doubt that it's worthless. If new stock is issued to the owners of old stock, they can only issue it if they know who the owners are. If the stock is sitting in a safety deposit box, and not registered with the corporation, obviously the corporation cannot issue the new stock until it is asked to do so.

As far as your GM stock, the US government bailed GM out about 5 years ago, and GM went through a Ch. 11 bankruptcy. GM shafted secured shareholders in the process I believe that may be what it is to which you are referring.

Yes, my shares were all digital ones, and yes, I was shafted.