When a Will Is Not the Whole Plan: What a Riverhead Courtroom Battle Should Teach Every Long Island Homeowner

Every so often, a case moves through our local Surrogate’s Court that is not just a legal footnote – it is a warning shot for every family on Long Island who thinks their estate plan is “handled.” This spring, that case landed in Riverhead.

In Matter of Lubrano, 2026 NY Slip Op 50641(U), decided by the Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court on March 24, 2026, a woman going through what her own attorney later described as a “horrible, acrimonious” divorce made her wishes clear when she signed her will: her husband was to get nothing, and he was not even to be mentioned. According to testimony discussed in the decision, the attorney who prepared the will told her, in no uncertain terms, that cutting her spouse out completely would not necessarily work because, under New York law, a surviving spouse generally cannot simply be written out of a will. She proceeded anyway, and she died before the divorce was finalized. Although the Surrogate’s Court dismissed the spouse’s objections to probate, the case still illustrates a separate planning problem: even a valid will may not be enough to defeat a surviving spouse’s statutory rights.

For Smithtown families – many of whom are sitting on homes now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many exceeding $700,000 after a decade of Long Island’s relentless real estate appreciation – this case is a useful, if uncomfortable, reminder: good intentions do not make good estate plans. Only the law does.

The Right Every Long Island Spouse Has – Whether You Like It or Not

New York is what’s called an “elective share” state. Under Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) 5-1.1-A, a surviving spouse who is a New York domiciliary is entitled, in most circumstances, to claim a statutory share of the deceased spouse’s net estate – generally the greater of $50,000 or one-third of the net estate – regardless of what the will actually says. You can write a will that leaves your spouse a single dollar, or leaves them nothing at all, and in most cases, that spouse can still go to Surrogate’s Court and elect to take the statutory share instead, unless a valid waiver, divorce, abandonment, disqualification, or other statutory bar applies.

There are exceptions. A spouse can forfeit the right of election through a valid, properly executed prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, through abandonment, through certain misconduct, or – as our courts see regularly – where a divorce has actually been finalized before death. But “we were in the middle of a divorce” is not the same as “we were divorced.” Until that final judgment is signed, in the eyes of the law, you are still married – and your spouse’s statutory rights may still be very much alive.

This is precisely the trap that so many Long Islanders fall into during a contentious separation. They rewrite their will in anger, assume it settles the matter, and never follow up with the actual legal step – the divorce judgment, or in some cases a properly drafted separation agreement with an explicit, mutual waiver of estate rights – that would make their wishes enforceable. A will alone, no matter how forcefully worded, cannot override a statutory right created by the New York State Legislature.

Why This Matters More in Suffolk County Right Now

This isn’t an abstract legal puzzle. It has real teeth here, specifically, for a few reasons tied to what’s happening in our own backyard.

First, home values have made “small” estates disproportionately large. With many Suffolk County homes now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many exceeding $700,000, a generation ago, a modest ranch house in Smithtown, Nesconset, or Commack might not have been worth fighting over in Surrogate’s Court. Today, that same house – often the single largest asset in an estate – can trigger exactly the kind of high-stakes dispute illustrated by Lubrano. When one-third of a net estate may effectively involve one-third of a valuable home, “the will says no” is rarely the end of the conversation.

Second, Suffolk’s demographic reality is full of blended families and second marriages. Long Island has no shortage of households where a spouse has children from a prior relationship, a family business, or a vacation property they are determined to keep separate from a current marriage. Without careful planning – trusts, properly executed prenuptial or postnuptial agreements, or beneficiary designations coordinated with the will rather than contradicting it – these are exactly the families most likely to end up in a Riverhead courtroom.

Third, our Surrogate’s Court, like courts across the state, is seeing these disputes with real regularity. Will contests, right-of-election claims, and fights over testamentary capacity are not rare, exotic proceedings reserved for the ultra-wealthy. They are a routine – and routinely expensive – part of estate administration on Long Island, particularly in an era of higher home values, more complicated family structures, and more contentious divorces that stretch on for years.

What the Lubrano Case Should Actually Teach You

It is tempting to read a case like this and think, “That’s a divorce problem, not an estate planning problem.” It is both. The real lesson of Lubrano is not that the will failed. It is that even a properly executed will may not be the whole plan when a surviving spouse’s statutory rights, pending divorce, beneficiary designations, and non-probate assets are involved. Here’s what I would want every Smithtown Social reader to take away from it.

A will written in anger is a will written with blind spots.  If you’re in the middle of a divorce, separation, or any period of serious marital conflict, this is exactly when you need a calm, experienced estate planning attorney reviewing your documents not just a document that reflects how you feel this month. Emotion-driven planning tends to focus on excluding someone rather than on what the law will actually allow, and that gap is where litigation lives.

“I don’t want them to get anything” is not a plan – it is a wish. A qualified estate planning attorney’s job is to translate that wish into something that will actually hold up: a properly executed waiver, a completed divorce, a trust structured to legitimately keep certain assets outside your probate estate, or – where none of that is available yet – an honest conversation about what the law simply will not let you do.

Timing matters enormously. If a divorce is pending and not yet finalized, your spouse’s elective share rights typically remain intact no matter what your will says, unless another valid statutory exception applies. If you are seriously ill, aging, or simply want certainty, coordinating your estate documents with the pace of your legal separation is not optional, it is essential.

Every asset needs a coordinated plan, not just a will. Retirement accounts, life insurance, jointly held real estate, and payable-on-death bank accounts all pass by beneficiary designation or by operation of law – often completely independent of what your will says. A will that disinherits a spouse means little if that spouse remains the named beneficiary on a 401(k) or life insurance policy. I regularly meet with clients who are stunned to learn their “updated” estate plan left an ex-spouse, or a soon-to-be-ex-spouse, as the direct beneficiary of six-figure accounts.

A Broader Lesson for Every Suffolk County Homeowner

Even if you are happily married, decades into a first marriage, and nowhere near a courtroom, the Lubrano case carries a lesson for you too: an outdated or poorly coordinated estate plan is a liability, not just an oversight.

With Suffolk County home values continuing to climb and property taxes rising alongside them, more of our neighbors’ estates are crossing practical thresholds – even if not always federal or state tax thresholds – where disputes become financially worthwhile for someone to pursue. A modest inheritance dispute was not worth a lawyer’s retainer in 1995. Today, when the house alone might be worth three-quarters of a million dollars, families that once would have quietly accepted an unfair outcome are far more likely to fight it out in Riverhead.

That means the stakes of getting your plan right – genuinely right, not just “I signed something once” right – have never been higher for ordinary Smithtown families, not just the wealthy.

Practical Steps Worth Taking This Year

If any part of this article gave you a small jolt of recognition, consider it a nudge rather than a diagnosis. A few concrete steps:

• Review your will and beneficiary designations together, not separately. They need to tell the same story.
• If you’re separated or divorcing, don’t wait for the judgment to update your plan — get guidance now on what interim steps (like a separation agreement with a mutual waiver of estate rights) can actually protect you before the divorce is final.
• Revisit your plan after any major life event: marriage, divorce, a new grandchild, the sale or purchase of a home, or a significant change in the value of your assets.
• If you’re in a blended family, talk to an attorney about trusts. A properly drafted trust can accomplish things a will simply cannot, particularly around protecting children from a prior relationship while still providing for a current spouse.
• Don’t assume New York law works like it does on television, or like a friend’s state. As cases across New York have shown, even domicile – where you legally reside – can determine whether a spousal right of election applies at all. Local, current legal advice matters.

The family in Lubrano faced litigation, legal fees, and heartache that a different set of decisions made earlier, and with full legal information, might have reduced or avoided. None of us can control what a Surrogate’s Court ultimately decides once a case like this is filed. But we can control whether our own families end up there in the first place.