The core legal challenge stems from the fact that Mrs. Volkov-Morrison was born in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in 1939—a sovereign political entity that ceased to exist on December 26, 1991.
“Every immigration attorney in the tristate area is calling us,” said Sarah Klein, Mrs. Volkov-Morrison’s estate executor. “Anastasia thought she was being thorough by writing a will. She never imagined that the country of her birth would come back to life in a legal form to claim her savings.”
“The Soviet legal principle of ‘socialist inheritance’ prioritizes the collective,” the Belarusian filing reads. “Mrs. Volkov-Morrison never formally renounced her original nationality during the dissolution window of 1991-1994.” first soviet citizen will probated in the united states
Judge Marcus C. Rehnquist, presiding over the Chancery Court’s probate docket, has ordered a "dual-tracking" approach. A forensic genealogist will attempt to establish Mrs. Volkov-Morrison’s legal nationality at the time of the USSR’s dissolution, while a separate master will review the validity of the 2021 Will under Delaware’s Uniform Probate Code.
However, a competing claim has been filed by the , acting through a private law firm in Washington, D.C. Belarusian authorities argue that under Soviet inheritance law, which they claim as a predecessor state to the BSSR, a portion of any citizen’s estate must revert to the state if heirs are not "direct bloodline dependents." The core legal challenge stems from the fact that Mrs
The decedent, identified as , a naturalized U.S. citizen who emigrated from Minsk in 1992, passed away last month at her home in Greenville, Delaware. Her Last Will and Testament, signed in 2021, has triggered a complex, multi-jurisdictional process that legal scholars say will test the limits of international estate law.
The probate hearing is scheduled for August 10, 2026. Legal experts predict the case will likely reach the Delaware Supreme Court, and possibly the U.S. Supreme Court, on the question of whether a non-existent state can be a party to a probate dispute. Volkov-Morrison’s estate executor
“The USSR has no embassy, no consulate, and no legal successor for private civil matters dating to specific republics before the collapse,” said Professor Elena Hartwell of Columbia Law School, a specialist in post-Soviet inheritance law. “The court must determine: Was her ‘domicile of origin’ the USSR, the modern Republic of Belarus, or a stateless entity? This has never been adjudicated in an American probate court.”