Basic Estate Advice
If a family member or friend has passed away and you are going to be acting as the Executor or Administrator of the estate (the “personal representative” in the words of the Legislature), here are some preliminary tips for getting off to the right start:
Grieve First
When someone dies, there is no real deadline for filing his or her Will or otherwise opening the estate. The Clerk of Court would prefer that you do so within 90 days, but in reality, the Clerk is not going to turn you away if it takes you a little longer than that to get started. Be with your family, attend to the funeral arrangements, and don’t worry about opening the estate until you are ready to proceed. Serving as a personal representative can be a difficult job, and you should have a clear head before beginning the process.
Don’t Give Away Any Assets
It can be tempting to go ahead and start distributing money or other items to a deceased person’s heirs, especially if there are specific items listed in a Will or if the heirs are pressuring you for their share. The best practice is to wait until you are ready to settle the estate or at least until you have information concerning the deceased’s debts. If the person dies leaving behind medical bills, credit cards, taxes, or other debts that can’t otherwise be paid, you will be held personally responsible for reimbursing the estate for the value of any items or money that you gave away. You will usually know what debts are out there within three or four months after you’ve opened the estate file at the courthouse, so everybody just needs to be patient until then.
Keep Accurate Records
One of your most important duties as a personal representative is to complete and file estate accountings with Court. Do yourself a favor and hang on to every bank statement, cancelled check, receipt, invoice, or other financial document that crosses your path. I once put a lot of time into compiling final account documents in a complicated estate, only to discover that in between drafting the documents and receiving the final bank statement from the estate bank account, the bank paid interest into that account in the amount of one cent ($0.01). Because of that one-penny difference, I had to go back and redo the paperwork before the Court would accept it. Take the job of personal representative seriously from the start and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the end.
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