Oh, lord, I don’t even want to think of the legal repercussions of forging a dead person’s signature for an insurance company.
Ha! I laugh at your puny “legal system”!
Ha, I say!
[sup]Good afternoon, Officer. Is there something I can help you with? Hey! Wait… noooooooo…[/sup]
IT TAKES A KRAKEN
I should have done this two weeks ago. My sister (a composite of both Sugarbaker sisters with a sprig of dragon’s tongue for garnish) tonguelashed her way to the right person and they’re sending an adjustor.
I am an attorney, but not your attorney, etc…
Yes, you need a Letter Testamentary signed by the Court. The executor then should be able to file the claim and transfer the deed on the home.
When my wife died we had a joint “investment” account (A mutual fund that we used as a holding account for mortgage, property tax, insurance, and other house-related expenses). I called the bank to see what needed to be done about closing it and was told I needed to file some sort of court-approved document certifying that she was dead in addition to a copy of the death certificate. I just wrote out a check for the remaining balance in the account and six months later they closed the account for lack of activity.
This is the kind of thing that the Executor or the Administrator of the Estate has to handle. Since at this point, your mother’s estate hasn’t been settled, the Executor or the Administrator has the authority to deal with the insurance and anyone else. From the insurance company’s perspective only the homeowner can make the claim. Since the homeowner is deceases, the Estate through it’s Personal Representative steps into the shoes, so to speak of the decedent. In this case, the Kraken didn’t have to do much other than make the claim.
All Letters Testamentary are is a document from the Court which states that person A has been appointed as either the Executor or the Administrator of the Estate. Where I am the document would be a Certificate of Qualification.
All that aside, I don’t understand why the insurance company claims person didn’t simply tell you that the Estate has to be the one to make the claim.
That said, is the estate making payments for the mortgage or the insurance?
- At least where I am, the Executor is what you call the Personal Representative if there is a will. The administrator is what you call the Personal Representative if there is no will.
Shit. I’m too tired to do a search.
makes note to figure out the origins of this gem tomorrow
Does she read A Game of Throne? I think she would love House Greyjoy 
LifeOnWry - Susan Smith was the NC woman who put her two small children in the back of her car and sunk it in a pond. Then she claimed she was carjacked by a “big black man” and he took her car with the kids in it. Lots of appeals on TV, that sort of thing. It turns out she was having an affair and she thought she’d have a better chance of snagging the guy if she wasn’t burdened down by her husband’s kids.
StG
GIVE US BACK THE EYE!!!
StGermain, as much as I wish I could foist off Susan Smith onto NC, GA, or any other state in the union, she is in fact A Good Sandlapper, a native of my beloved South Carolina.
Just thinking about her and Bobby Baker (now there’s an old school reference fer ya) fills me with such pride that I want to sing Carolina until my lungs burn.
Who was it that put a fly in a dead man’s mouth and then moved his hand holding a pen to sign a document - all so that it could be sworn that “the man signed the document while there was life in him”? 
Stand back, Dan… brandishing a neon-green syringe…
TOTALLY missed the Susan Smith thing. :smack: The setup sounded like just another interesting Sampiro story.
A few years back my grandmother wanted to make some changes to her telephone service (adding caller ID, I believe) and she called the phone company. Problem #1 was that the phone was still in my grandfather’s name. Problem #2 was that he died over 20 years before that day.
So I called them to try to straighten things out and the rep said that the executor of my grandfather’s estate needed to act on his behalf to change the phone service. I explained that the executor of his estate was his brother, who is now also deceased.
After being placed on hold, I was told that I needed a fricking ORDER from a Circuit Court Judge allowing me or my grandmother to act on behalf of my dead grandfather to get caller fricking ID!!!
I hung up, called back an hour later and said, “Yes, this is (my grandfather’s name) and I would like to add caller ID to my phone service”. Took about 10 minutes. 
Maybe it’s because the CSR’s are operating off a script? You throw them a lulu, like grandfather dead/executor dead/grandmother going senile/house in foreclosure and they don’t know what to do.
Hell, I can’t do anything with our utilities under my husband’s name, and we’re both alive and well. I friggin’ hate that. We’ve come a long way, baby, my pearly white ass.