RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal
By John Hill
Journal Staff Writer
Posted May. 17, 2016
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The disgraced Catholic order that successfully fended off a challenge to its control of a deceased woman’s multi-million estate last year is facing a new threat from a national anti-abortion group.
Americans United for Life is asking a Superior Court judge to overturn a Smithfield Probate Court ruling that found AUL waited too long to challenge changes Gabrielle Mee made in her 1991 will, which would have left a tenth of her approximately $60 million estate to the organization. The new version, drawn up in 2000, left all her estate to a religious order called the Legion of Christ. She died in 2008.
AUL wants its day in court to argue that the Legion used fraud and undue influence to induce Mee to change her will in the Legion’s favor.
Mary Lou Dauray, a niece of Mee, made similar arguments in a 2012 lawsuit. She lost when Associate Justice Michael Silverstein ruled that, though Dauray produced significant evidence of fraud and undue influence, because she wasn’t named in the will she didn’t have legal standing to challenge it. That ruling was upheld by the state Supreme Court in January, 2015.
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