A long story so bear with me on this.  I don't know a whole lot about Class III weapons and I am about to go down a strange road.

The Story:

My best friend's father, and as honest a man as I have ever met, has been a local gun smith for 45 years.  99% of his work is on hunting and common rifles, although he has excellent knowledge of Garands.  My friend's father was contacted last week by a woman in her mid 50s.  Her husband was a successful businessman in the area and was an avid gun collector.  The husband had met another woman and left his wife to move out of state and start a new life.  Most of you can see where this is headed.  The 'dumped' wife was contacted by the husband who told her to liquidate all that had been his and to keep the cash. My friend's father has been asked to appraise the weapons for sale and then to sell them at fair market value.  This guy left 2 teenage sons at home when he bugged out so no one wants to treat the lady badly in a deal because we can see where the money is going.
     There is some nice class III stuff at the house including some HK's, suppressors and a .....................BAR.  Here is the problem, the guy is gone and although the form 4's are in the safe he is required to sign them for a transfer to take place.  It isn't likely that the forms are going to get signed and I don't have enough knowledge about class III to give any ideas.  Is there anything that can be done?

If individual owned by the gone father, then untill he is dead the family should not even have access to the items, let alone be trying to sell them.

So they get to keep the safe locked untill he dies.

Yep - Like Tommy said. Unless the woman wants to get the ex into trouble for abandoning his NFA to her in an illegal transfer... but that runs the risk of the ATF demanding they be surrendered.

My first guess would be to get Form-4s fill out with his info and blank trensferee blocks. If she can get his sig on those, she should be good to go.

Wow, is this a bad situation for the "wife".

There is absolutely no way she can sell these guns without her ex-husbands participation. Hell, technically she can not even transport the guns to a dealer even if her ex-hubby fills out the form 4's and leaves them blank.

Again, this is going to be extremely difficult process.

Good luck to here.


ETA: I just had a thought, she would be better off having all the C3 items transferred to her. I know it would be expensive, but she will make a good money on the items anyway and doing it this way would help keep her GTG on the legal part.

This same thing just happened in AK when I left. Guy leaves wife with a huge NFA collection but he doesn't want to sell it, judge makes him sign the form 4's and the weapons get transfered to a dealer.

He will either sign the form 4 freely, or if there is a divorce, the judge will make him. Easiest would be to have him sign the forms now.

The ATF wont confiscate/destroy the guns. They might "hold on" to them if this thing goes to a long drawn out affair. That would be fun-ask me how I know

Thanks for the help and ideas.  I was afraid of just exactly what you have all told me.  My advice to the 'wife' will be for the transfer signatures to be made part of the judges order on the divorce decree.  I don't see where the husband can be counted on to follow through on his own.

Quoted: She would have to be an awfull nasty bitch before I would just walk away from my collection. His final get-screwed sounds like, here you can have all my guns, they are yours now to deal with.

Uh ya, if I packed my shit and walked out, the first thing I would take is everything in my safe.  WTF?

She should send him blank form 4's to sign, and see if he signs them. Since he told her to sell his collection in the first place, why wouldn't he follow through and help her liquidate it by signing the forms?

Maybe she should talk to a lawyer and see if a "Power of attorney" from the husband would be sufficient for her to sign the forms.