I am administering my late uncle Owen’s estate. He died never having been married, and childless, and without a will. I hired a lawyer in September 2008, and he submitted all the legal papers to the Dupage County court (in IL) to name me Administrator, get me access to the assets, etc.
Everything went pretty well until last August. I had paid out about half the assets to the heirs early on, after determining that there didn’t appear to be any major debts hanging over the estate. I had filed Owen’s 2008 taxes and made sure that the estate didn’t accrue any income in 2009 to cause tax complications into 2010. The lawyer had published a death notice to give potential creditors a chance to put in claims against the estate. The waiting period for such claims has also passed.
There is very little left to do. I have to distribute the remainder of the money to the heirs, collect an administrator’s fee, and submit whatever documents that the court requires to account for the assets and close the estate. One of those requirements is a report on the distribution of the assets to the heirs, and that is what we were working on in August. The lawyer had sent me a draft report and we were having some back and forth about the Administrator’s fee. He was also going to draft a letter to the heirs to accompany the report, asking them to sign documents attesting that they accepted the estate accounting as accurate and reasonable.
Suddenly, communications stopped. I waited through August and into September for drafts of the letter and the document for the heirs to sign. Until this point, there was never a lag of more than a couple of days between correspondence, mostly via email.
Email to him and his paralegal assistant went unanswered. Phone messages were not returned. Conversations with the firm’s receptionist were uninformative. Neither were ever in, or “available”, and she would take messages that were also not returned.
Finally, talking to the receptionist around Christmas, I was told the paralegal was unavailable because she was on another call. I said, “I’ll wait”. After a few more minutes the receptionist came back on and said the paralegal wouldn’t be able to answer my questions, and I said, “ She doesn’t know what my questions are. How can she know that? And my first question is why isn’t she replying to my messages. Doesn’t she know why?”
Anyway, just before Christmas I left a voice mail for the lawyer threatening to find a new lawyer if I couldn’t even get him to return a phone call. And finally, he did call back and we had the first direct communication in 4 months. He had a good story. He said he’d been in a serious accident, and had several surgeries. He was now mostly recovered and back in the office working again. He also promised to get the promised draft documents to me immediately.
I haven’t heard anything from him since. I’ve left more messages, but again, no responses.
This week I decided not to wait any more. I’ve sent out another round of checks to the heirs, holding back $5,000 to hire a new lawyer to go into court and file whatever papers are needed. Since the total legal fees to date are still under $3,000, and his initial estimate was 3-5 thousand, I can’t see it costing more than that. I have a draft of the financial report from the lawyer that I have updated.
I dunno, I don’t really think going on without any lawyer is a good idea. There are too many things I don’t know, like what options the heirs have if any of them have objections to the Administrator’s fee. OTOH, if I write them a letter with all the details, and no one raises objections, I might be able just to write a final round of checks and be done with it.
I’m feeling kinda in limbo here.