Contentious Belfast family lobster pound lawsuit makes it to Maine high court

On the day before he died, Robert R. Young appeared to have made a dramatic change to his will.

A handwritten note, labeled as a last will and testament, said the 82-year-old widower wanted to auction off his family’s seafood restaurant in Belfast and donate the proceeds to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

His son Bob later told a court he had seen the document and talked to his father on that day in 2017.

The new will would have meant disinheriting Young’s other son, Raymond, who had been set to keep Young’s Lobster Pound and Seafood Restaurant under their father’s first will. That original document, which was prepared by an attorney and notarized in 2000, also matched their mother’s will. She died a couple of months before their father.

Young’s three children have spent more than eight years in two different courts, debating the legitimacy of that 2017 document. A superior court judge ended Raymond Young’s lawsuit against his siblings in 2022, finding he failed to prove his claims that they had coerced their father into disinheriting him. Then in 2025, a probate judge sided with Raymond Young, ruling that the handwritten document could not be considered their father’s final will and testament.

Now, Maine’s highest court will weigh in on the future of Robert Young’s estate and restaurant. Oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday.

Bob Young and his sister, Dianne Parker, argue that the case highlights a question about jurisdictional boundaries — why argue something in superior court if it can be revived in probate court?

The process and outcome, their attorney F. David Walker wrote in court records, “offends nearly every stated goal of our judicial system, including finality, economy, comity and fairness.”

Walker did not respond to a request for comment, and Parker declined to discuss the case ahead of the high court’s decision. Bob Young did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Raymond Young’s attorney has argued that the probate judge’s ruling was distinct because that court holds “exclusive jurisdiction” over contested wills.

Waldo County Probate Judge Joanna Owen wrote in her order, which was appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, that there were several reasons to not consider the handwritten document as Robert Young’s final will, including the fact that his signature didn’t match how he had signed earlier documents, and that the new plans were a departure from those he had laid out in his earlier will.

Robert Young’s attorney and others who knew him testified that they had not been informed of any plans to sell his business, Owen wrote. She also noted that his children had described him “as a man who made clear his opinions and positions.”

“Nothing was lining up,” Raymond Young told a reporter on Tuesday.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

Before Sept. 30, 2017, the plan was for Raymond Young to take over the restaurant that he had managed for his father since 2000 and all of his father’s real estate, and for Parker to inherit their father’s banking accounts, according to court records. Stocks and bonds were to be divided between the two.

In the will drafted in 2000, Bob Young was left with $1 — he had been estranged from his father for many years before reconnecting after their mother’s death in July 2017 following a long illness, according to court records.

Claire and Robert Young had been married more than 60 years. Before Robert Young died on Oct. 1, 2017, he wrote at the end of a note that he “shall go and be with the love of my life into eternity, where I’ll belong.”

Bob Young has said he was there on Sept. 30, 2017, after his father wrote the new document. Their father appeared to demand that Raymond Young and his family be fired, the business be auctioned off, according to court records.

Owen also considered three other handwritten sheets, which appeared to be signed by Robert Young and were undated. In those, Robert Young left a $90,000 bond to Bob Young. Owens wrote that Robert Young had mentioned this plan to his attorney in August 2017, and her order states that Raymond Young did not oppose Bob Young receiving the bond.

According to Bob Young’s lawyer, Robert Young asked his son to take a picture of the document on his phone. Bob Young testified in court that his father told him he planned to bring the document to his lawyer that Monday.

Raymond Young and a friend found Robert Young’s body the following morning and called police. According to court records, Raymond Young testified that he had instructed the friend to hide a handwritten note found on a table so that his death “didn’t look like a suicide.”

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled in 2017 that Robert Young had died by suicide. In 2018, according to court records, his cause of death was amended to “undetermined” because no toxicological samples were taken before he was embalmed. A spokesperson for the state medical examiner’s office said on Wednesday that finding still stands.

Raymond Young, suspicious about the nature of his father’s death, asked both the superior and probate court judges to let him exhume his father’s body and investigate. Both requests were denied.

Raymond Young had alleged that his brother was responsible for his father’s death, or had a role in what happened. He said that his siblings, including his sister, “coerced or wrongfully influenced” their father into changing his estate plan to disinherit Raymond Young. Justice Robert Murray ruled that Raymond Young had presented no evidence of that.

“These were conspiracy theories,” Walker, the attorney for Bob Young and Dianne Parker, wrote in court records. “There is not now, and never has been, a scintilla of evidence supporting the claims.”

PROBATE RULING

Walker wrote in court records that his clients had been relieved after Murray’s ruling.

Murray also wrote in his 2022 order that certain issues were still left to the probate court — while Raymond Young hadn’t proven to him that he had “possessory right” over his father’s property, the probate petition he had filed in 2017, seeking to become executor of his father’s estate, was still pending.

The probate case was paused until after the superior court ruling, when Raymond Young began asking for some of the same things that Murray had denied.

Walker wrote in court records that his clients “believed that their ordeal was over” after Murray’s decision.

“The breadth and thoroughness of the Superior Court’s decision surely resolved and finally disposed of all claims Raymond had brought, or could have brought,” Walker wrote. “This relief, however, was short-lived.”

Owen, the probate judge, moved forward with a trial in August 2025 because she felt there were enough facts in dispute.

In her order, she focused on the handwritten document. Owen ruled that Raymond Young had not shown evidence that the handwritten note was fraudulent, but wrote that there was “ample evidence” that Bob Young had inflamed the situation by suggesting that his brother was planning to sell the lobster pound.

Even if it had been written exactly as Bob Young testified, Owen wrote, it could not be considered their father’s final will. According to the order, the testimony from Bob Young that their father told him that he planned to bring the document to his lawyer suggested Robert Young thought there was still work to be done to finalize the document.

She ruled that there was no evidence that Robert Young meant for it to be final.

Now, the appeal of Owen’s ruling will go before the state’s supreme court, which will take the issue under advisement after oral arguments.

IF YOU or someone you know is in immediate danger, dial 911.
FOR ASSISTANCE during a mental health crisis, call or text 888-568-1112. To call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call 988 or chat online at 988lifeline.org.
FOR MORE SUPPORT, call the NAMI Maine Help Line at 800-464-5767 or email [email protected].
OTHER Maine resources for mental health, substance use disorder and other issues can be found by calling 211.