What is “Spreading a Will of Record”?

Video

Good morning, folks. It’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. I’m back for another talk about an estate administration topic or probate topic. Today. We’re talking about spreading the will of record, which is also called probate of will without administration.  

So what? What is this? What are we talking about here? This comes up when you have a small estate usually.  

Different Routes through Probate

So in the Indiana probate code, you know you’ve got full formal supervised administration. You’ve got unsupervised administration if you need to do some court involvement, but not quite as much. And then you’ve got “dispensing with administration,” which means you don’t do any administration at all.  

And that happens when the estate property is below the threshold and right now that’s at $100,000. So if you’ve got a small estate. You don’t need to go through all the formal probate processes.

Wills and Small Estate Administration

But you know, if there’s a will. You’ve got basically three years to probate the will. Now there are tons of exceptions to that, but that’s another topic.  

So if the decedent left a will but also has a small estate… you want to give effect to the will, but you don’t want to go through all the administration. That’s what spreading the will of record is for. That’s “probate of will without administration.”  

What does spreading the will of record look like?

Basically you take the will to the court and you say. “Look. Here this person left a will. We don’t need to do anything with it because we’re. Doing the small estate. Procedure which is really informal. … but put it on the books. Recognize that it’s valid”  

That way we’ve got it later in case anything comes up and it’s kind of, you know, it’s just a precaution … Just a way of making sure it’s on the books before the times up. That way, if there’s any question about it, you know it’s there. You’re not trying to dig for it years and years later. It just kind of answers the question. Good best practices.  

And it’s really easy. It’s basically just a petition to the court. You know: “this person died. Here’s their will. We think it’s valid because it’s witnessed and there’s a self proving clause.” 

And the court looks at it and says “Yep, OK. Go for it.” And then you just carry on doing whatever the small estate administration is. In that case, no further action needed.  

So that’s just kind of one piece of the total small estate procedure which I will talk about in a different video because it’s lengthy.  

When Do You Need Probate Without Administration?

But I think the one other important thing I need to note here is this. The small estate procedure applies to “probate assets,” so it doesn’t mean that the person was flat broke. It means the person was either flat broke or did some good estate planning like maybe a revocable trust or beneficiary designations or something such that there aren’t probate assets. Doesn’t mean there are not any assets at all.  

So, spreading will of records really common for a pour-over will that you’re using in conjunction with a revocable trust, right? Because everything’s in the trust. The probate assets are below the small estate limit. You’ve got a will just to catch anything left over. So you spread it of record. That’s a really common use case.  

You know the other would be even with less advanced planning, maybe you’ve got a transfer of death deed for the house. And a couple of retirement accounts with beneficiary designations again. You know, it’s not very fancy planning, but the probate assets are minimal, so you’ve got a will as a backup, you probate it without administration, you spread it of record, but everything else is going outside of probate.  

So that’s kind of the procedure. That’s how it works and it’s easy to do and like I said, it’s common in certain scenarios: a true small estate; an estate that’s small because everything’s in a trust; and an estate that’s small because everything’s handled with transfer on death designations.  

But easy to do if you need help with it, call me or book your appointment online. And like I said, this very routine thing to do and hope this talk has helped you understand what what you’re looking. Thanks and bye for now.