Addressing the question:

> In the experience of the VA-List what possibility is there that it  
> took 14  years to settle his estate in this wilderness area?

I've found that 20-25 years is not all that unusual in finally
settling an estate.  (I can point to some that took longer than that.)
Locality may be one factor, but the biggest factors seem to boil down
to:

1. How many debts did the deceased have?  Creditors wanted their money
yesterday (before the estate was dissipated).
2.  What was the financial state of the widow and children, and what
were the ages of the children?  Often the time until estate settlement
depended upon the financial resources of the survivors, and who and
why they were motivated to push for settlement.  For example, I've
seen estates languish for years because when the deceased died, the
widow was well situated, the children were young, and it seems that
they really didn't have a motivation to settle the estate until the
children began to move away from the old home place.
3. Distance from the courthouse and the amicability of the legatees,
or potential heirs, might be a factor.  I can read between the lines
on some estate settlements that the estate was actually settled and
distributed informally between family members, and it was only the
influence of an outside factor that finally pushed the survivors to a
formal, legal settlement.  An example of this is the sale of land -
often years after the death - when the buyer might insist on legal and
clear title from the seller (who informally inherited the land from
such an informal family-oriented division).

So from what I've seen 14 years is really not all that unusual at all.

Lou Poole

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