Many of our sellers call us about their options of selling a home that a loved one owned and are just getting started on the process of dealing with all the legal stuff. If they are lucky, the loved one had all of their ducks in a row.
More often than not, the house and other assets must go through the Probate process. So I think it would be beneficial for us to take a look at how the process works.
So what is a probate estate? This is when the individual is deceased without a surviving spouse and the assets are not held in Trust, then the estate is probated by law. This is the process of finding and paying all the creditors.
The Probate Court makes a concentrated and reasonable attempt to contact all fo the creditors of the deceased so that by law the creditors can collect. The court will decide the satisfaction of the estate with the creditors and the distribution of the assets relative heirs as outlined by the written Will of the deceased – otherwise know as the settlement of the estate.
