SOUTH KINGSTOWN — A legal battle over the multimillion-dollar estate of beloved University of Rhode Island Prof. Beatrice S. Demers will continue for at least six more months to give lawyers time to collect evidence and prepare their cases for a hearing.

Lawyers representing a first cousin of Demers, who died last year at age 100 after spending her final years suffering from dementia and self-neglect, are claiming that Demers was of unsound mind in July 2002 when she executed a will and trust leaving her millions to charity. A second claim –– that “undue influence” was exerted on her in devising her estate plan –– has been dropped.

Most of the money accumulated by Demers from decades of investing in the stock market was left to the Rhode Island Foundation, to be distributed to Rhode Island college students who want to study foreign languages.

But the eleventh-hour objection filed by Demers’ sole surviving first cousin, Theresa Pare Germani, of Marco Island, Fla., has stalled the distribution of the charitable bequests. Edward L. Gerstein, one of several lawyers representing Demers and her estate, complained in a recent court hearing that “it’s going to cost a tremendous amount of money” to fight Germani’s objection –– an expense that the estate will incur, leaving less money for the scholarships.

Gerstein asserted in court that Germani was “engaging on a fishing expedition, a fishing expedition across the seven seas to hunt for something, to hunt for a hidden treasure.” If Germani were to prevail and a judge determines that Demers died without a valid will and trust, then Germani and the children of her other now-deceased first cousins would receive all of Demers’ money. The charities would receive nothing.

Over Gersteins’ objection, Probate Judge Stephen R. White decided at a June 19 hearing that lawyers for Germani can go back as far as 1998 in probing into Demers’ state of mind. They will be allowed to seek information from various agencies, issue subpoenas and interrogate people under oath about their dealings with Demers going back four years before she executed her will and trust.

Lawyer Steven M. Richard told Judge White that he wants to talk with personnel at the state Department of Elderly Affairs, which had repeated dealings with Demers regarding her self-neglect, beginning in February 1998. Richard said that he also wants to view her medical records and interview the geriatric psychiatrist who determined in a test in 2003 that she suffered from dementia. The doctor’s report, known as a DMAT, showed that Demers suffered from impaired judgment and was also belligerent, delusional and suspicious.

White has sealed the court filed in the Demers case but gave Germani’s lawyers permission to comb through it. He set a deadline of Dec. 31 for the lawyers to complete their pretrial discovery and set a hearing date for Jan. 15, 2009.

Demers was a professor of foreign languages at URI for 30 years and before that, in the Pawtucket school system. None of Demers’ relatives was bequeathed anything by Demers, who left an estate worth at least $4 million but perhaps as much as $8 million.

Demers’ longtime accountant, John A. Parmalee, said that in addition to the Rhode Island Foundation, other beneficiaries of Demers’ trust will 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.

Demers established a trust and executed her will about a year and a half after she was rescued from her Victorian home in Wakefield by 19 firefighters, who had to use a cherry picker to extricate her from the piles of debris she had accumulated over many years of hoarding and living alone in squalor. At times, she had five dozen cats living with her as well as two dogs.

During the last few years of her life, after the Probate Court became involved, she lived with round-the-clock caregivers.

In a hearing on June 19, Gerstein argued that only the Superior Court, not the Probate Court, would have jurisdiction to set aside Demers’ trust, where almost all of her money resides. But Richard disagreed. “We think this would be the proper venue” to discuss Demers’ mental capacity, he told White. “We seek to obtain records from the DEA regarding its interactions and investigations pertaining to Demers’ physical and mental well being … Our hope and intention is to be able to obtain medical and psychiatric records from the various caregivers that interacted with Ms. Demers, particularly during the period prior to her execution of the estate planning documents on July 5th 2002, as well as a period shortly thereafter. We are trying to get a complete picture of Ms. Demers’ capacity.”

Richard acknowledged that “it may be … that there were periods where Ms. Demers’ capacity could have fluctuated but we’re trying to understand the time line…”

Gerstein vowed to come back to court if Germani’s lawyers try to subpoena Demers’ medical records.

In an interview this week, he said “whatever her state of mind was on a particular date in 1999, 2000 or 2001 is irrelevant. The law is clear,” he said, “that eccentricities or peculiarities, or unusual behaviors don’t render a person incapable of making a will. The test is whether on the day that Beatrice signed a will she had a mind sufficiently sound to dispose of her property.”

He noted that in the fall of 2003, Demers appeared at two Probate Court hearings “and she was very coherent.”

tbreton@projo.com