Maryland court orders new trial over $3.2 million trust after sisters challenge inheritance

A Maryland appeals court has ordered a new trial in a major legal dispute between three sisters over their late father's $3.2 million trust fund. The court found that trial judges had wrongly blocked important handwriting evidence from being presented. In an opinion issued in October 2026, the Appellate Court of Maryland overturned an earlier ruling that had given one daughter sole control of the estate. The appeals court found that mistakes in the legal process had prevented the other two sisters from having a fair chance to challenge their father's estate documents. The dispute involves the estate of an elderly father who died at the age of 95, leaving behind a trust worth several million dollars.Disputed trust and handwritten notesThe legal dispute began after the father's death, when two of his daughters discovered that his main estate planning document, the S.K. Amini Trust of Maryland, named their third sister as the only main beneficiary and trustee. While looking through family records, the two excluded sisters found documents containing handwritten notes in Farsi, the modern Persian language spoken in Iran. One of the sisters recognised the handwriting on an important Fars...