Aaron Hernandez’s suicide put his estate and its financial future in a legal limbo, and lawyers for the estate, the New England Patriots, and the NFL will need to sort through contracts and obligations to determine exactly how much money the estate might still be owed.
One of the key reasons behind the fact that the Hernandez story remains unfinished, per the Boston Globe, is Massachusetts’ legal concept of “abatement ab initio,” in which the legal status of a deceased individual engaged in appeals reverts to the status it was at the beginning of the case — i.