This was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. When my mom passed away my dad made me executor of his estate. Upon his death, everything, money, cars, house would all belong to the estate. The reason my dad did this was so that I could handle things for my brother. He didn’t want him to have all of his share at once because when he has money, he has friends that need it and my dad wanted him to have some for a long time to take care of himself. I had no problem with that part. I had no idea what all was involved in the rest but I quickly learned.
My first step was off to the lawyer that drew up the will. He is no longer there so the other lawyer in the office took over. He helped me set up a federal id number since things are now in a trust. He also helped in obtaining some money that was left in my dad’s bank account. I was a joint owner on his account however on the extra savings account, I was not and therefore not entitled to the money even though I was just moving it to the trust. Since the estate was not going through probate since it wasn’t being contested, they needed a letter. It also helped that there wasn’t a lot in it to begin with. With the letter from the lawyer, it satisfied the banks requirement so they were able to set up the account. The trust also owns three vehicles and the house all have to be re titled. That wasn’t a problem for the house but the vehicles also need to have new plates on all of them and the insurance changed over. Most insurance companies will not insure a vehicle in a trust name so it had to go in my name as executor. Insurance companies also are not happy to insure an empty house. Fortunately the house still has stuff in it so we are ok for awhile. The truck my dad had needed to be sold since neither myself or my brother wanted it. This wasn’t a problem since we sold it in about 3 weeks.
The hardest part of all of this is dealing with the house and everything that goes with it. I wasn’t blind to what was in store for me but until I actually got to digging into things, I had no idea what all there was. My parents had items from both of their mother’s homes from when they passed away and all of that along with all of their own stuff is in this house!! My dad and I attempted to go thru some of it, but it was very difficult for him. There were a lot of memories and he is a child of the depression so you don’t get rid of things, you just fix them.
Please, if your parents have accumulated a lot of items, try to go thru them while they are still able and either hand them down or weed them out. I’ll explain why in the next blog. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and headache if you do.