Lawyer in charge of Fotis Dulos estate seeks to have Jennifer Farber Dulos declared dead, claims she was likely dismembered

The court-appointed lawyer overseeing the estate of Fotis Dulos has filed a motion asking the probate judge to declare Jennifer Farber Dulos dead arguing that she was likely dismembered after she disappeared nearly 15 months ago.

Normally in Connecticut a person has to be missing for seven years before the probate court will declare them legally dead, but Christopher Hug is trying to speed up that process because he wants Dulos’ estate to have access to a retirement account that has more than $194,000 in it, according to the court records.

Fotis Dulos, who was still married to Jennifer Farber Dulos when he died, tried to commit suicide last January when he connected a vacuum cleaner hose to the tailpipe of his car. He was rescued by Farmington police and emergency personnel only to die of few days later. Dulos didn’t have a will and left no beneficiary to his estate.

Farber Dulos disappeared on May 24, 2019, after dropping the couple’s five children off at private school.

Under Connecticut law, the person’s spouse would be the beneficiary of the IRA that is managed by Fidelity Investments. If the spouse is shown to have died before Dulos, then the estate would be the beneficiary.

In a letter to Fidelity regarding the IRA, Hug wrote “there’s no doubt she is deceased.”

“The undersigned remains active in assisting law enforcement with locating Jennifer’s remains, which are now believed to be in multiple dismembered parts,” Hug wrote.

He doesn’t expound on that theory further in the letter. Fidelity officials rejected his request, saying without a formal death certificate showing Farber Dulos was dead she would still be considered the beneficiary.

Farmington Probate Judge Evelyn Daly hasn’t scheduled a hearing on Hug’s motion.

Attorney Richard Weinstein, who is representing Gloria Farber, the mother of Jennifer Farber Dulos, filed a motion supporting the declaration that Farber Dulos is dead.

“Based on extensive discussions with numerous friends and confidants of Jennifer Farber Dulos, as well as her mother Gloria, the undersigned supports the motion to determine title that Jennifer Farber Dulos predeceased Fotis Dulos, and never, ever would have left her children voluntarily,” Weinstein wrote.

After Jennifer Faber Dulos disappeared, police found evidence of a struggle in the garage of her New Canaan home, including blood splatters on the tires of cars and on the walls.

Despite an extensive search, she has never been found. The couple’s five children have been living with their grandmother, Gloria Farber, in New York City ever since she disappeared.

The couple was going through a bitter divorce that had been pending for nearly two years at the time of her disappearance. So while separated, they were still legally married, making her the beneficiary.

Fotis Dulos was arrested in early January and charged with the murder of his estranged wife. His former girlfriend Michelle Troconis and a local lawyer Kent Mawhinney were both charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Both of their cases are still pending.

Dulos was allowed to remain free following the murder charge after posting a $6 million bond. A small portion of that bond was $250,000 that he took from his IRA, records show. Most of the bond included real estate holdings and funds put up by Dulos’ new girlfriend, Anna Curry.

But a few weeks after his arrest the bond company moved to pull the bond because many of the properties that Dulos had put up for collateral were in foreclosure. On the morning he tried to kill himself in his Jefferson Crossing garage he was supposed to be on his way to Stamford court to have his bond revoked.

Dulos left a suicide note in which he claimed he had nothing to do with his estranged wife’s disappearance and that neither did Troconis or Mawhinney.

“If you are reading this I am no more,” the suicide note starts.

“I refuse to spend even an hour more in jail for something I had NOTHING to do with,” Dulos wrote. “Enough is enough. If it takes my head to end this, so be it.”

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