The Superior Court clarified the time frame during which a spouse can revoke their choice to receive a one-third share of their deceased’s spouses’s estate, commonly called the “spousal election” in In re Jabbour. Here, the surviving spouse filed the spousal election in an “abundance of caution because she did not have sufficient information about the Decedent’s non-probate assets, as her Husband was very secretive about his finances and she had no knowledge about his finances.” Later, she tried to revoke her spousal election because she gained “full knowledge of the extent of the Decedent’s estate.” The Court held that the surviving spouse should be allowed to revoke the spousal election because she did not have full knowledge of the decedent’s estate, so she could not make an intelligent decision earlier, and there was no prejudice to the other heirs.
