When we went to a one night community class on wills etc (where we each filled out and had notorized a Will, POA, medical POA, and healthcare directive)… the lawyer that taught the class highly recommended appointing just a single executor (and an alternative). She said she had just seen too many complications with other setups.
OP – they have a contract to clean out as much of the home as possible, next week (so, 10 weeks after the death) , over two days. The executor (out of state) has helped create a list of items he believes to be of value/worth saving or finding. The furniture will not be saved,for example.
Our DiL does not want us there, and she (right now) will not be there but my son will be. Nobody can enter the home without protective stuff anyway, and she is too traumatized, ashamed, horrified, grieving, to be there or to have us see things and that’s something we support. if she changes her mind, fine, but I think she needs the agency in all this so we roll with that.
DH has offered to simply be there, in the yard. I’ve offered to go stay with DiL during the day (we’d get a hotel for the night) if she decides she wants company, up to her. The lawyer also said he will come and check how it is going. They are doing 2 days bc that’s all the money they have available (high 4 figures) and yes, the estate will eventually pay them back.
If anyone has tips, I’d appreciate it.
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Make sure drawers, pockets in clothes and jackets, and nooks and crannies are checked. I found my mom’s diamond watch stuffed in a sock in a lingerie drawer. My dad thought she had lost it long ago. My grandfather had wads of cash in pockets.
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Make short videos of items listed in a will/ needed for probate, to be appraised, etc… Make an inventory of where the items are being stored once removed from the home. Tag with stickers and inventory number.
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Your DiL may benefit from support group or consultation with hoarding experts. See the show Legacy List with Matt Paxton
https://www.mylegacylist.com/
Or others with experience with chronic disorganization.
https://www.challengingdisorganization.org/
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My brother was a hoarder (mostly of trash), and another brother & I did the majority of the cleaning after he passed away. There were things we saw that would have traumatized us had we not had somewhat of an understanding of what we might find (although it was worse than we imagined). It was extremely difficult to deal with the situation, from a personal perspective … this was our brother, whom we loved very much, and it was hard to be face to face with his reality. I understand your DIL’s feelings. I’m sorry that she feels shame on top of all of the other feelings she’s experiencing. Not going in sounds like a wise choice for her - no reason to make a bad situation worse by seeing it up close & personal. My heart goes out to her.
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My sister’s MiL had over 10k stashed all over her 800 sq ft house. In pockets, clothing, drawers, with junk papers, in books. And that’s what they found……some probably was tossed with junk.
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I had an elderly patient who told me she hid her jewelry before she went into the hospital. After her death, I told her son to look carefully before tossing. He found the jewelry in a box of Xmas ornaments. He wouldn’t have looked so carefully if not for the hint.
This lovely woman also listened to me saying that I had just redone my Trust, and was told to put my house into the Trust or to add my child’s name. She was going into Kmart, and saw an lawyers office next to it. She walked in, and had the lawyer add her sons name to her house (& bank account).
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I helped clean out a house for a friend after she died…along with another friend. We found active stock certificates worth thousands of dollars stuffed in the back of drawers that looked like they were filled with junk. We also found jewelry stashed in odd places.
IOW, you need to look at every single item…because things of value might not be where you would expect them to be.
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We scoured my parents’ home for my mom’s will after she passed away. It was odd, because Mom was so organized that usually we had no trouble finding anything. We finally gave up.
Then one day, long after the house had been emptied, my sister and I went over to go through it a last time. We happened to open up a drawer under Mom’s vanity, and there was the will! We had emptied those drawers when we were looking for her jewelry. I guess the estate sale people stuck it there but why didn’t they give it to us? So weird. There was literally nothing else left in the house.
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I’ve mentioned this before but WRITE down where the stuff is hidden. And preferably exchange that info with somebody in the family (you don’t necessarily want all that info in your own house) so at least one family member has a clue where to go look for stuff. Or write it down just so YOU know where it’s gone to.
And before you throw out someone’s collected birthday cards open them to see if money is in them…
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My great aunt died after a battle with cancer. In the
few months between diagnosis nd her death, she labelled objects in the house with who she thought might want them. My dad was her executor (she had no children or spouse) and he had helped her inventory everything and then distributed the list to family, asking people to say if there was something they would like to have, and in the case of duplication, he made the decision.
She had parties to give away her jewelry, books, and paintings. She died in the same house she was born in, at 97. And only then did we find the (dozens of) gold coins she had hidden in false bottoms of tables.
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If two people are on a BOA savings account as POD does it automatically distribute 50/50? Does it go through the estate court (that might vary by state)? Thx
That’s how it worked for our family. Almost all of my parents’ accounts were payable on death to avoid probate.
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Thank you. The lady at the bank said it would distribute per the will but when I settled my brothers estate, anything with a beneficiary was excluded.
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Unbeknownst to the rest of us my sister “helped” my mom add herself to my mom’s account as the POD. The bank account was actually a trust account so the (major) bank branch rep should not have allowed it, I was told. It took weeks of dealing with the bank and escalation to the “corporate legal panel” to determine the trust had precedence and they were voiding the POD. The trust had equal split among beneficiaries. May not answer your question, but related and may be of interest.
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My parents wills had everything equally divided between the same people on the POD accounts so there was no conflict. Not sure how that would work if it was any different. There wasn’t a trust, just a straight forward will.
My sister had done something similar, but as Trustee/Executor, I told her to transfer over that bank account balance to the Trust.
The argument I made was that mom had only intended to make sure that we kids (all adult beneficiaries) could pay funeral expenses, house payments and other bills, when she passed. The intent was not to give my sister ownership of the balances…
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Per the BOA website—The beneficiary or beneficiaries must provide notarized letters of instruction in addition to the death certificate.
Where would notorized letters of instruction come from or look like?
We got the letters of instruction from the attorney handling the estate.
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