SOUTH KINGSTOWN –– Lawyers representing the estate of beloved University of Rhode Island Prof. Beatrice S. Demers, who died last year at age 100 after spending her final years suffering from dementia and self-neglect, are ready to distribute to charity the millions of dollars she accumulated investing in the stock market.

This will mean that several Rhode Island students who want to study foreign languages will get free or reduced tuition, thanks to Demers’ bequest to the Rhode Island Foundation. According to Demers’ longtime accountant, John A. Parmalee, other beneficiaries include Brown University, where Demers went to school; a religious order that benefits nuns in France and a half-dozen Native American organizations in South Dakota, New Mexico and Montana.

But some distant relatives of Demers –– who lived in Wakefield and spent her life teaching foreign languages, first to students in the Pawtucket public schools, then for 30 years at URI –– are objecting to the will being admitted to probate. In an interview, Maureen Sviokla, of Providence, whose mother was Demers’ first cousin, asserted that Demers was not of sound mind when she executed her will and established a trust in July 2002. As part of her objection to the probate, Sviokla said she wants an accounting of the money that was spent on a raft of lawyers that handled her affairs during the last years of her life.

South Kingstown Probate Judge Stephen R. White has scheduled a hearing in the case for May 15.

Demers established a trust and executed her will about a year and a half after she was rescued from her Victorian home by 19 firefighters, who had to use a cherry picker to extricate her from the piles of debris that she’d accumulated over many years of hoarding and living alone in squalor. She spent the final years of her life at home with round-the-clock nursing.

Michael Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch –– whose elder-abuse unit investigated the Demers case after it was revealed that a former caregiver, Alice Jane Barker, had taken $128,000 from her –– said this week that as part of the probe, it had looked at whether Demers was competent at the time she executed her will and trust.

“We have no conclusive evidence that she lacked the capacity to execute those documents in July of 2002. The earliest diagnosis of her mental condition that we have is from September of 2003. That [report] which was submitted to the South Kingstown Probate Court, says that Beatrice needed help making decisions with financial, health-care and residential matters,” Healey said. The report, known as a DMAT, showed that Demers suffered from impaired judgment and was also belligerent, delusional and suspicious.

But based on the timing of those findings –– which post-date the day Demers executed her will –– Healey said his office has decided not to intervene in the current probate dispute. It decided last summer not to prosecute Barker despite her admission of guilt.

Barker admitted her guilt in an interview with The Providence Journal in late 2005 and said she anticipated being indicted, but last July Healey said prosecutors had concluded that they could not make “a sustainable case” because Demers never wanted to press charges. Healey said another complicating factor was that a former student of Demers, lawyer Frederick C. Kilguss Jr., who is a trustee of Demers’ trust and now lives in California, had worked out a restitution plan with Barker in which she would repay Demers $86,000 in lieu of prosecution.

Anthony R. Mignanelli, a Providence lawyer who now serves with Kilguss as co-trustee of the Beatrice Demers trust, declined this week to talk about the specifics of Demers’ bequests or the attorneys’ and trustees’ fees that have piled up over the past several years. All he would say was that the fees “were reasonable based on the hellacious litigation that went on and continues.”

At one point, Demers was paying six lawyers –– the two trustees, two litigators they had hired, a temporary guardian and a lawyer the temporary guardian ended up hiring because of disagreements with Mignanelli and Kilguss.

Demers, who never married, accumulated her wealth over many decades by shrewdly investing in the stock market.

Mignanelli said he would not say exactly how much will go to the various charities that Demers selected as beneficiaries. He said that The Rhode Island Foundation wanted to make a big public announcement at an appropriate time –– once the probate proceedings concluded –– and that as the major beneficiary of the Demers estate, the foundation would need to give permission before he could talk publicly about specific bequests.

He said he was surprised that anyone was objecting to the probate, even though “the family didn’t inherit” and all of her money is designated to go to charity.

Demers remained single all of her life and her only close relative was her mother, who predeceased her. She was a very frugal woman and over many decades invested nearly all of her earnings in the stock market. Mignanelli said Demers was so wise with her investments that they produced enough income in her final years to pay for all of her private-duty care in her home as well as all of the fees charged by her lawyers and trustees. “Bea had an incredible performance in the portfolio and that was something she did all on her own,” he said. “There was an enormous amount of profit.”

It is unclear exactly how much remains in the Demers trust to be distributed to the charities. It is at least $4 million but could be as much as $8 million.

tbreton@projo.com