Tag: Client Reference

Video

Good morning, folks. It’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. Today’s talk is really instructional, and this is going to be shared, I think, with my clients and prospective clients as kind of a how-to, and that is: what to expect when you’re named personal representative.  

So If you’re watching this video, you’re probably either thinking about hiring me or you’ve just hired me to represent you as personal representative in a probate estate.  

So what’s going to happen? Like how is this representation going to go?  

Three Stages of Probate

Well, there are basically 3 steps in administering a probate estate.

The first step is kind of the initial filings, right? It’s getting everything around and petitioning the court to open the probate estate. That’s step one.  

Step two is administering the estate. And that’s all the things we need to do to get the property passed on to the right people in the right way.  

Step three is, you know, closing the estate in a final accounting distribution.  

So in general, big picture, the personal representative is in charge of gathering the estate property that’s out there, administering it for the benefit of creditors and beneficiaries, and then providing a final accounting and distributing it.  

1. Opening the Estate

So the first steps, the busiest time is going to be right off the bat. I’m going to ask you for a bunch of documents, a death certificate is probably the single most important one, the will or other estate planning documents, if there were any, the names and contact information of you and all the other heirs and beneficiaries. Okay? Because we need to know, we need to know what we’re dealing with and we need to be able to tell the court, you know, here’s what’s involved. Here’s who you are. Here’s who’s concerned in this estate. And so those documents really help establish that and prepare those filings.  

And you’ll need to sign a bunch of stuff, right? I routinely use e-signatures. You can come into the office too. But you need to say, yeah, I promise, judge, that, you know, I am who I say I am. I have an interest in this estate. These are the people, you know, you’re making a promise to do this the right way. And the court needs to see that.  

2. Administering the Estate

So that’s kind of the first step is opening the estate. If the court approves it, which, we do it right, they do, you need to begin administration.  

This is step 2, the second big chunk. And this is where you need to do things like opening an estate bank account, right? Notifying, figuring out who might, have a creditor claim against the decedent, usually this is like utility bills, maybe an unpaid credit card, a mortgage company, find who they are.  

Because the step 2 is really tell everybody concerned, hey, we’re administering this estate, make an estate bank account because it’s a separate entity, right? We’re putting all of the decedent’s property into this pot, the estate. And, you know, creditors can ask to have some, the beneficiaries ultimately, you know, get their shares. So that’s kind of step two. And step two takes at least three months because that’s the statute waiting period, right? The people who might have a claim get three months to come forward, which is, you know, pretty fair, right? They don’t need to be Johnny on the spot, but they also can’t just like wait forever. So the three months is like, okay, that’s what we need to do.  

And administration sometimes is really easy. You know, if no creditors come forward, you know, if the property’s mostly just like a bank account and maybe a house without a mortgage, maybe you’re not really doing anything for three months. So it can be quiet or it could be really busy.  

if there are lots of properties, there’s a business you have to keep running, if there’s a mortgage you have to keep paying, it can be busy.  

3. Closing the Estate

Finally, step three, which comes, you know, at the end of that three-month waiting period or later if there’s more work to be done. Step 3 is you know, closing out accounting and distributing the estate. So this is where you’re going to, you know, tally up the accounts, say, okay, which creditors are we paying? How much? You know, you pay expenses of administration. So my legal fees, court fees, if you pay, if you have to pay a realtor to sell a house, right? And then come creditor claims. So funeral expenses, utilities, the mortgage. So you pay all of those first, kind of off the top.  

And then you say, okay, here’s what’s left. And it goes to, you know, equally three ways to the kids or, you know, to the beneficiaries designated in the will, you know, as the will says. And so that final accounting, we need to make sure we get it right. It’s a little bit of a process.  

And then there’s a final statement you file with the court saying, here we did it. And in an unsupervised estate, that closes the estate on its own. In A supervised estate, you need a court approval, you know, saying, okay, you did it right. And then we close out and we’re done.  

So that’s the big picture. When you’re the personal representative, you’re going through these three stages. You’re you know, getting the information around to open an estate. We’re doing those initial filings. We’re getting, you know, we’re getting the court permission to act. Stage two, we’re gathering estate property. We’re figuring out what needs to be paid and what needs to be done. Stage three, we are settling up. We are paying valid claims, paying expenses, and finally distributing the estate.  

Timeline for a Simple Indiana Probate Estate

And the whole process start to finish, right? we can get an estate filed in the first week, couple days, and then a week to issue letters and then three months of administration and then maybe a few weeks to finalize and close.  

Conclusion

So that’s the overview. That’s, kind of what to expect here. And so if you’re my client, I’m going to refer you to this video just to kind of just kind of have a roadmap in your head. And obviously, you know, there’s lots of guidance along the way. And the reason you hire me as your probate attorney is because, yeah, I’m there to answer questions for you and to walk you through, the details of those stages. This was an overview.  

I hope it was instructional and reassuring. You know, we’ve done this before. It’s a very logical process once you understand it. So nothing to worry about. I look forward to working with you. And as always, my contact information is in the end card. It’s all over my website and you’ve got it already if you’re my client. Thanks, bye.