Will Probated In The United States | First Soviet Citizen

However, a competing claim has been filed by the , acting through a private law firm in Washington, D.C. Belarusian authorities argue that under Soviet inheritance law, which they claim as a predecessor state to the BSSR, a portion of any citizen’s estate must revert to the state if heirs are not "direct bloodline dependents."

The decedent, identified as , a naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated from Minsk in 1992, passed away last month at her home in Greenville, Delaware. Her Last Will and Testament, signed in 2021, has triggered a complex, multi-jurisdictional process that legal scholars say will test the limits of international estate law. first soviet citizen will probated in the united states

“The USSR has no embassy, no consulate, and no legal successor for private civil matters dating to specific republics before the collapse,” said Professor Elena Hartwell of Columbia Law School, a specialist in post-Soviet inheritance law. “The court must determine: Was her ‘domicile of origin’ the USSR, the modern Republic of Belarus, or a stateless entity? This has never been adjudicated in an American probate court.” However, a competing claim has been filed by

The case has drawn intense interest from the estimated 750,000 former Soviet citizens living in the United States who naturalized after 1991. Many have outdated wills that refer to their "Soviet" birth. Her Last Will and Testament, signed in 2021,

The core legal challenge stems from the fact that Mrs. Volkov-Morrison was born in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in 1939—a sovereign political entity that ceased to exist on December 26, 1991.

Judge Marcus C. Rehnquist, presiding over the Chancery Court’s probate docket, has ordered a "dual-tracking" approach. A forensic genealogist will attempt to establish Mrs. Volkov-Morrison’s legal nationality at the time of the USSR’s dissolution, while a separate master will review the validity of the 2021 Will under Delaware’s Uniform Probate Code.

According to court filings, the estate is valued at approximately $4.2 million, consisting primarily of real estate in Delaware, a collection of Soviet-era art, and a bank account in Cyprus. The Will names two primary beneficiaries: her son, Dmitri Volkov of Brooklyn, New York, and a charitable foundation supporting Russian-language poets.