The Georgia Superior Court/Probate Court Dance
November 9, 2016
by: Luke Lantta
No procedural or jurisdictional issues in Georgia fiduciary litigation can cause as much headache as the sometimes exclusive and sometimes concurrent jurisdiction of the superior and probate courts. The Georgia Court of Appeals’ recent decisions in Rentz v. Rentz and Rentz Family Farms v. Rentz put a spotlight on these procedural and jurisdictional tensions. The cases involved the distribution of real property held by an estate, a probate court’s order to liquidate that real property despite a current lease on certain parcels, and an attempt to have a superior court weigh in on the propriety of the probate court’s actions while the probate court proceedings were ongoing.
The appellate court’s description of the interaction between the probate and superior court as “complicated” may be an understatement. Cutting through the “complicated interaction” was
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