Probate
Sorry to hear about you father in law. I certainly am no lawyer so take my advice for what it is worth. I guess the first question is will his assets have to go through probate or not. If they do, then per the state law the executor is going to have to notify any potential heirs. Typically those notices can be hand delivered or mailed. Not really a big deal. One thought I would throw out there is if the assets will not satisfy the debts, why even mess with the probate at all. Of course it just depends on the assets.
As far as appearing before a judge, typically in a probate, there is no appearing before a judge.
A probate can be handled without a lawyer. I know there are some people out there who would say that is not good advice. I disagree. I have never done a probate ever but am going through one right now. I am helping a friend whose brother passed away. The lawyer told him it would cost about $5000 for the probate if he did it. I am doing it for free. My friend knows I have no experience in this. The good thing about it all is the probate is pretty simple. There is only one heir. There are some significant assets (about $60,000) but no debt that we know of. It is pretty slam dunk actually except for the 4 month waiting time.
What I did was I looked online for as much info as I could find. For my state there are no electronic forms, only paper forms. So I bought a packet from the local stationary store that has all the required forms as well as all the instructions. I then went to the local courthouse where there is a public law library and did some research on probates. In fact, my lawyer told me there was a book there on administering estates that he told me if more lawyers would read there would be less holdups in the probate process. I then took all the forms, scanned them in to my computer and began filling them out.
Everything really depends on the assets and liabilities, how many heirs there are and what the relationships are with the other heirs. It sounds like he has a will so that will give some direction.
One thing I have found out is there are no probate police out there. Meaning if he passes away and let's say he has $1000 cash and owes $3000 in credit card debt, there is no one out there making sure a probate it filed. Now the credit card company could initiate the probate and try to recover some of their loss, but in such a case I doubt they would. I would not screw with a probate.
My opinion is this. Meet with a lawyer. He/She is going to ask you a bunch of questions and will give you options on what you should do. Be up front with the lawyer and tell him/her that you want to keep expenses low. In my friends case, I estimated it would cost about $700 to $1000 in expenses. That is me doing it for free. Well maybe not for free as I am sure my friend will give me something.
Again, sorry for the family illness. I do not check here too often, but feel free to post some more questions. And by all means, do some searching on the internet.
Battlespace said:
What is the name of your state? The Bluegrass state.
My father-in-law is dying of congestive heart failure. He has a will naming my wife as executor. There is hardly any estate to speak of and once the property that he wants to go to certain children is divided and the rest is sold there will not be enough to come near to satisfying his debts.
My questions are:
We want to keep expenses to a minimum in order to pay off the largest share of debt, who and how do have to do death notifications with?
Does the estate have to go in front of a judge and if so, can't she represent herself?
