Unrecorded Deed Upheld

In a dispute about whether the decedent had validly conveyed a property to her daughter as joint tenants with right of survivorship, testimony about statements made by the decedent about her daughter-in-law were admissible as evidence of the decedent’s state of mind consistent with the conclusion that the decedent did not want the property to pass to her daughter-in-law under her will, a deed signed by the decedent was valid even though the deed was not correctly notarized and was not recorded within two years (see 21 P.S. § 442), and it was not an abuse of discretion for the Orphans’ Court to find that the testimony of the daughter was credible even though the deeds she said were signed by the decedent contained discrepancies (for which the daughter had “rational explanations”), and even though the daughter had been convicted of federal wire fraud. In re: Estate of Emma Roy, Deceased, 1564 EDA 2024 (Pa. Super. 4/17/2025) (non-precedential).

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