Dear langstaff,

I can not tell you if this is worth pursuing, because I can not tell you if the court will consider any cause of action in your favor. It obviously worth it if you can at least gain a partial settelment.

I can address several other issues, but they may not be exactly what you are looking for. My approach is different than what you are asing in each case.

let me start and we can go from there:

1. If the will gives you any inheritance, you have to balance that agains what you might get in probate. This is without regard to the any promised gifts that are not contained in the will. The will is waived, and the property is probated, then the best you can do is accoridng to the following:

If the decedent is survived by issue, a surviving spouse gets the first $50,000, plus one-half of the remaining property in the intestate estate. You and anyother children would evenly split the remaining assets.

If by that formula, you stand to inherit more, then you would be better served to waive the will. BUT, in so doing the wiaver should include lanaguage to gaurantee you your fair share of the probateable assets.

Since the will excluded you, as a natural born child you would be entitled some probate; but to be sure, you would want to have representation

2. CHILD SUPPORT: Child support arrearages that have been established do not expire; and so if you have established child support arrearages from a court judgment or child support enforcement, then you would be able to assert a claim for the child support arrearages against the estate. If no arrearage was formalized or established, then you would have to pursue a judgment from the probate based on making arguments. You will need a copy of the child support judgmetn from the original divorce decree.

3. Alimony: You have no right to the alimony as that was a payment belonging to your mother.

4. The promise of a 100,000K gift. This is not likely going to be sustained, unless you have a written agreement to that effect. The reason is, that this is a promise of future payment, but does not normally rise to the level of a contractual debt. If you had a witness to the promise of the gift and the langauge you used in the question, then it would be part of evidence of contestability of the will. It shows intention. But in my opinion, this would only be valuable in the context of proving intent, where there were other grounds of contestability to the will....Grounds of contestabiliyt may be something like: he was not in his right mind and was coerced into making the current will by the step family.