Aiken SC funeral home owner and partner concede battle for contested will of $8M estate
The battle over a seven-figure South Carolina estate is finished, according to a lawyer’s statement.
An Aiken funeral home owner and his former business partner have abandoned their claim in the case of a contested will that a lawsuit alleged was the product of the duo preying on an elderly woman with dementia.
The lawyer for the two men denied that accusation when he spoke with The State Friday.
The Aiken Standard first reported on the duo dropping their claim and on their lawyer’s statement.
Cody Lee Anderson, owner of Geroge Funeral Home and prominent member of Aiken society, and Thomas Allen Bateman Jr., the former owner of the funeral home, are no longer seeking to enforce to a will created in 2020 by Mary Margaret Wenzel Crandall, who died with an estate estimated at $8 million or more.
John Harte, Anderson and Bateman’s lawyer, said in a statement that affidavits filed Friday made it clear that the 2020 will would not have legal standing. People who signed the 2020 document as witnesses said in the affidavits that they didn’t know they were signing a will and did not communicate with Crandall.
Anderson and Bateman had posited that the 2020 will overrode a 2001 will. The 2020 will was said to have named Bateman as the sole beneficiary and Anderson as a representative of Crandall, while the 2001 will divided up the estate among relatives, colleges, churches and genealogical societies.
Friday, The State reported that Crandall’s former lawyer and estate were challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 will. The lawsuit against the 2020 will accused Anderson and Bateman of taking advantage of Crandall as she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. The two orchestrated an elaborate ruse to create the will and have it witnessed, the lawsuit claimed.
Attorney Billy Newsome of Columbia called Anderson and Bateman’s alleged actions a “shocking” example of exploiting a vulnerable elderly person.
Harte denied all the allegations against Anderson and Bateman, calling the claims “extreme” and unfounded, when he spoke with The State Friday about mid-day.
Friday afternoon’s concession of the will didn’t deny that Crandall intended to give her estate to Bateman and Anderson, just that the document was not properly witnessed.
“Even if Ms. Crandall was of sound mind and even if she intended to dispose of the estate as set out in the 2020 will, the formalities required by law were not followed,” Harte said.
The will from 2001 will now be upheld. That document left the considerable estate to family, friends, distant relatives living as far as German and Brazil, Smith College in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a South Carolina environmental group, two Catholic churches in New York and South Carolina and genealogical societies.
This story was originally published April 2, 2022 at 3:57 PM.