We hired a guy like this to finish cleaning out my mother’s apartment. He didn’t charge by the hour, he gave me a flat fee after looking at it. His services were invaluable. I hope he was able to sell some of her stuff, as cleaning out the place was a lot of work.
I did not have to appear anywhere when i was named executor. I did have a zoom call with my mom’s attorney and the other sibs where we learned what her final will said. (Exactly what we expected, but you didn’t know until you know.) Different state, but if you have one trip, showing up to take physical possession of valuables sound right.
Eta: i see your cousin has agree to do this. That’s very kind of him.
Sounds like things are working out as smoothly as could be hoped for. Your cousins are proving their true character.
Just keep good records of everything. Should you end up executor, just be sure to provide a clear accounting of the assets, any expenses, and the calculation of sibling’s share. Don’t for one second imagine that you can prevent them from being a jerk, and don’t let their inevitable jerkishness bother you.
I’m sure others share my desire that you check back in periodically to let us know how things go. Your experience will better inform all of us.
This all reminds me of stuff that happened after my wife’s mother died.
My wife’s older sister was named as trustee (this involved a trust, not an estate, mind you… a slightly different situation of course).
She took the assets in the trust account and moved them into a personal bank account (illegal, of course). Then she sat on them for 5 years or so.
Ultimately when pressed on it she said my wife had been stealing money from their mother in the 5 years my wife dedicated her life (and almost destroyed our marriage) as a 24/7 carer keeping the elderly ailing mother alive, while the sister did jack shit to help.
To this day she has not distributed the money (as the trust instructions clearly require).
I think we should take her to court but my wife keeps saying "but she’s still my sister’.
Needless to say, that sister is NOT my favorite person.
Sorry, a bit of a vent. Sore point.
Very similar to my wife’s situation. From my perspective, the $ she stole was cheap to the extent it allowed my wife to finally and permanently write off that bitch.
Hi, Jackie. If you haven’t already done so, I did a yelp search for apartment cleanout people in Minneapolis. It returned several recommended businesses. Here’s one, for starters.
I hear you. My wife has finally realized what an asshole the sister is and we are no longer on speaking terms with her. Fortunately we don’t need the money.
That was my whole original point: the soreness around death is sometimes indelible.
In our case, the judge basically ruled that the thing had taken so long that the additional value of the land when it finally sold more than compensated everybody for the illegal activities. I wanted justice rather than money, but everyone else preferred money.
The family relationships (such as they were) have never recovered.
I do think my wife’s father would be turning in his grave if he knew about it.
He named the older sister as trustee, probably because she is very good at presenting a convincing front as a capable and reliable manager. Whereas she is actually incompetent, greedy and self-rightous.
Oh well. Take away from all this: do not appoint a family member as executor or trustee.
Use a neutral third party.
One would hope. But in this case, the sister was VERY GOOD at seeming to be reliable and competent. It was only when the rubber hit the road that the truth emerged.
I have to admit, I have not really followed my own advice. We have a very simple will, leaving everything 50/50 to our two children, with the older as executor. I think I trust my daughter… but I guess my wife’s father thought the same?
Fortunately there are no other potential beneficiaries to complicate the issue…
One way to minimize issues is to setup beneficiaries on your financial accounts. The beneficiaries will get the money directly when you die without having to go through your estate or be distributed through probate. Typically, you can specify multiple beneficiaries and the money will be split evenly. So name your two children as beneficiaries and the financial company will send 50% to one and 50% to the other. If you do this with all your financial accounts, then your estate might just be the leftover stuff like the house, household goods, cars, etc.
SS has ways of finding out about deaths fairly quickly, but if they make extra payments, they will claw those back as soon as they find out. I did not know about SS / bank freezing accounts (I was not involved in that part of handling any of the family member deaths).
The money doesn’t go through your estate, so it’s not considered inheritance. It’s like having a beneficiary on a life insurance policy. The beneficiary gets the payout upon your death regardless of anything in your will. However, with beneficiaries, you might not be able to distribute money if the account is considered joint or common property and the other person is still alive. So if you die in a community property state and your spouse is still alive, they are supposed to get the money regardless of what your beneficiaries are set to (IANAL). But if you don’t have a spouse, then your beneficiaries get the money directly. You could give it to a child, charity, random person, etc.
Good. But now I’m wondering about the ‘tax basis step up’ on things like stocks or real estate.
When those are inherited, the cost basis is (as I understand it) reset to time of death.
Does that also work if you designate it as a beneficiary?
Of course, I’m not expecting professional legal or financial advice here… just wondering.
And hopefully I’m not about to croak off anytime soon…
We’re getting a bit off the OP here… perhaps split to a new thread?
You can’t technically designate a beneficiary for securities or real estate - but you can make a Transfer on Death designation for securities and in at least some states, on deeds. This is different from joint ownership. TOD is treated as an inheritance (because it really is) and you get the step-up tax basis.
Just to clarify, if other people’s experience is different. We reported the death to Social Security. SS reported it to the bank (a credit union) where SS deposited each month’s payout. The credit union responded by freezing all asset and credit card accounts. Other banks may not do that. I think SS also reported to Medicare.
Which makes a bit of sense - the bank, knowing from SS that the account holder is dead, may need to freeze the account due to estate laws. I don’t know what they would do if the account is joint - I don’t think this happened when my FIL died last year, as MIL was joint on the account. I do know it was several months before they could get through to SSA to get the benefits straightened out, during which time MIL was likely being paid both benefits.
