All About Notices of Administration

Video

Hi folks, it’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. I’m back with another talk. I’m recording this one just after the one I did before on personal representative bonds. Today’s a very closely related topic, and that’s Notices of Administration. And these are things that go together right at the start of a probate estate.  

What is a Notice of Administration?

So you petition the court, you say “please, we need to open an estate to administer, you know, the decedent’s affairs.” You make that petition. The court will order the appointment of a personal representative (that’s going to be the person in charge) and then once the court is satisfied and you’ve posted a bond if you need one (see the other video), the Court will issue letters of administration or letters testamentary, which is the document that gives the personal representative powers to act. And the Court will also issue some “notices of administration.”  

That’s what we’re talking about today.  

And these [notices of administration] come in two flavors.  

There is a published notice of administration that just goes to the entire world. It’s basically, you know. People we don’t know about. Anyone who’s interested can see this.  

There’s another notice of administration that goes to distributees – beneficiaries – known creditors. So that’s kind of the people we do know about.  

Why Do You Have to Publish the Notice of Administration?

And both notices. Have the same content, they basically say. OK, this court, you know, whatever court it is, Marion County, has opened administration of the decedent’s estate, case number. Blah blah blah.  

And it warns whoever receives the notice, you know, here’s how the estate administration’s going to go. And if you have any claims against the estate, you need to bring them in the statutory time period. So if you want the person to pay debts, you’ve got to let us know now so that the personal representative can deal with it and allow or disallow the claims.  

(We’ll talk about how creditor claims are handled later) but the purpose of the notice of administration to distributees is saying, “hey, people we know about, this is what we’re doing,” and the published version is, “hey, people we don’t know about, here’s what we’re doing.”  

How Does Publication Work? Who Sees It?

The published version gets published in a newspaper, usually. So like at the back of the Indiana Business Journal, right, the “court and commercial record” is what it’s called here in Marion County. Johnson County’s got its own business paper. At the back there are all these, like, little paragraphs. And that’s exactly what these notices of administration are, they say: this court, this case, here are the dates.  

And you might say, wait a minute. I’ve never looked at those. Who looks at those?  

And the answer is well, creditors do! Right? people, people have a job to, you know, look through it and say, aha that’s one of our utility customers or that’s one of my credit card customers. And so they will. They will see it. You won’t see it because you know you don’t care about estate administrations, but creditors do monitor it.  

So that’s just one more step in starting administration. Your attorney, me if I’m your attorney, will take the notice that’s issued by the court and go to the correct newspaper and say “publish this please.” And pay the fee, which is reimbursable from the estate and it’s an expense of administration. 

And the newspaper will say, great, we got it. We’re going to publish it. And then later, after it’s been published, you get a proof of publication. You take that to the court and you say “look, Court, we did publish it just like we were supposed to.”  

So that’s about all on the publication side.  

Notice of Administration to Known Creditors

The other people the notice goes to is “known creditors.” T e personal representative is supposed to look through the decedent’s affairs and say, OK, well, you know he didn’t pay his last utility bill. We got some hospital bills. You know, maybe we got some credit card. 

 So you need to make a list of those, and you send the notice directly to those creditors. You say, “OK guys, you know, we think that the decedent might have owed you money. You know, here’s your chance to speak up and say something.”  

And that’s just by mail, usually… I’ll try to link to the statute… [Here’s the statute! Indiana Code § 29-1-7-7. Notice of Administration :: 2024 Indiana Code :: U.S. Codes and Statutes :: U.S. Law :: Justia] It says, you know, by mail or other means reasonably calculated to result in notice. So I guess you could e-mail it if they had an e-mail . But I think most attorneys just mail it.  

And it doesn’t even have to be… It doesn’t say certified mail or return receipt. It’s just, you know, send it. And that’s your obligation. And then after that, you’re supposed to report to the court and say “by the way, we notified these creditors.”  

So that’s how that works. Notices are just to get the word out so that anybody who has claims can come forward because you kind of want to get everything out into the open so you can deal with it at once.  

If you got any questions about that, you can always call me. Like I said, I handle lots of Indiana probates. I’d be happy to help you through yours. Thanks and bye for now.