Everything goes to our only. I am not worried about dispute down the road. The kid doesn’t have anyone to fight over. Regardless, I like to keep my paper work in order. The trouble is I don’t have a good attorney on the new state. And they do charge for faxing and copy. Their faxing and copying isn’t cheap.
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sometimes banks can recommend a few attorneys that are ok and charge reasonable estate amounts. Our bank recommended two (my brother who works for competing bank recommended someone else and I went with brother’s recommendation).
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If you are moving to or from Louisiana that could change things. Louisiana uses the Napoleonic Code instead of English Common Law as the basis of their laws.
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But thanks to this thread I learned that in most states you can have the title to the car as ‘transfer on death’ and then all the surviving person has to do it take the death certificate to the DMV and get the title reissued . No probate needed.
I learned this too late to get the title to the transfer from my mom to me, but for $8 and a trip to the DMV, I can make it happen.
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I happened on a youtube court hearing that was really good.
There was a guy, Larry, who had a Kansas Will. Larry had left everything to his mother and father, and specifically left nothing to his two children (after a divorse when to Washington state and were/weren’t adopted by stepfather. Will made in 1999. Well, Larry died but his parents had died before him (gee, imagine that, old people dying before their old children) Kansas has a law that directs the executors and courts to do everything they can to keep the Will from lapsing, to try to follow the Will as best they could, but the anti-lapse law only allows the Will to benefit those in direct line (no siblings or cousins or even grandparents), down the line only not up.
Larry has 2 siblings and a half sibling (only his mother’s child). All are dead. Brother #1 has a daughter. Brother #2 no children. Half brother dead, but he might have a daughter, but she was never adopted or, as far as anyone could tell, formally recognized. Larry’s two children were claiming a part, not as his kids but as two grandchildren from Larry’s parents, as the parents (grandparents) had not eliminated them from THEIR estates. And Larry’s daughter had 4 children.
So Brother #1’s daughter (Larry’s niece) - she’s in.
Larry’s children claiming his 1/2 (if half brother’s daughter out) or 1/3
Half bro’s D -claiming her portion (hoping for 1/2 if Larry’s kids out)
Judge ruled that Larry didn’t want his kids to get anything so they are out, but that Larry’s grandchildren were not specifically excluded, so they get Larry’s share.
Half brother’s daughter has to prove she’s related through DNA. If she is, she gets 1/3. They may have to exhume bodies! And then oh wait, she would get 1/3 of grandmother’s 1/2 of total estate, because her father would only have been related to grandmother.
I think there were 5 attorneys on the zoom, and all were very calm, very prepared with arguments on Kansas and Washington law (there was a question if Larry’s kids had been adopted by their stepfather, but they had not been).
Why am I posting about this in the estates and executors’ thread? It was the executor who filed the petition because she had no idea how to disburse the estate. None of these people had much of a connection to Larry while he was alive. It was all just about the money (and I guess there was a lot of it).
All the attorneys agreed the attorney who drew up the Will screwed up by not naming a contingent beneficiary, especially since Larry was older, his parents even older, and his brothers already dead.
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For those of you who have served as executors, what type of payment method do you use when you liquidate the estate/trust account and give the final proceeds to the heirs? Cashier’s check? Wire Transfer? Something else? The “trust” funds are in a regular bank savings account (not brokerage) without a checking account attached to it. My lawyer said a “bank check” but I was wondering if it’s just a plain ol’ check or something else.
I need a method that I can track/have proof to make sure it is correctly cashed/deposited by each heir before I close the main account. I have one heir that is notoriously slow to get anything done with their banking and who neglects to communicate with me. What should I use?
I do not have any experience in this, but can you find out if it is possible to ACH the funds to their accounts. You will need the routing and account numbers, but the transfer is essentially immediate. It will show in the outgoing and incoming accounts transactions.
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I setup a free checking account with a local credit union under the name and tax ID of the Trust and sent both regular checks and did ACH payments to beneficiaries. If they wanted the money faster, they gave me their account and routing number. If not, they could wait for a manual check to arrive via snail mail. (I was too cheap to pay for bank checks, which to me, was a waste.)
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I have experience as a beneficiary. When my sibling settled one of my parent’s estates, checks were mailed to me and my other siblings. Via USPS. Quite a few months later, a medical facility or insurance sent a refund. That was also distributed as paper checks. This originated in California, but also included Kentucky as destination.
When SisIL died, my H and BIL were beneficiaries. The trustee/executor opened a free checking account for the trust and just sent us regular checks. We were all in regular communication. We all had no problems and promptly deposited checks we all received.
With a challenging beneficiary, I agree that a free ACH deposit might be easiest to do, but beneficiaries would have to give routing and acct info.
Or, as long as the OP has the address, just send a check by USPS Priority Mail with tracking.
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I was the executor for my mother’s trust. When she passed, I wired the funds from her trust checking account at BOA to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts. I did need their routing and account information, but that wasn’t a problem to get (they were all her children and grandchildren). Each beneficiary received a 6-figure amount so I worried about sending a check through the mail, even Priority Mail. I did go into a branch to send the wires, but I could have done it online, too.
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I have noticed more and more difficulty with reliable mail delivery, even within the same city. Many people never received my son’s wedding invitations, nor the invoice and contract for my upcoming tour (though others received their invoices & contracts and also their invitations). It was very upsetting to us.
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In 2 estates we’ve had, each beneficiary has opened a brokerage account in the same brokerage as most of the stocks and cash. (Fidelity for example). Then with the help of a rep, transferred everything from the estate account to the individual accounts with new cost basis for securities.
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We used bank wire transfers.
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I wrote regular checks on the Estate account checking account to disburse the proceeds from the house sale. In hindsight, I probably should have sent the checks via something more secure than the US Mail.
Previously, each sibling had opened accounts at my mother’s brokerage firm to receive share of brokerage, Inherited IRA, and Inherited Roth accounts.
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We got checks via US Mail and no receipts. No one had any problems receiving. Some assets were POD and transferred to beneficiaries upon presentation of the firm holding the asset with a death certificate. This included insurance proceeds, IRAs, and brokerage accounts.
I think the isue is that one of the recipients is lax about cashing checks, which would make it difficult to close the estate’s account.
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so they won’t cash a check but will willingly give over their bank and routing numbers?
But yes, ACH transfer works fine, as I mentioned upthread.
btw: I kept the Trust bank account open (with ~$50) for one+ year after filing the final tax return just in case anything else pops up, or I made a mistake on the return and the IRS wants a different number.
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I kept our estate account open for two years because I was paranoid ; )
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