Good morning. It’s Fan Mail Friday, once again. Hey, this is the Fridays where we take questions from sellers, just like you. All right.
The question we got this week is what to do when the sole heir won’t start probate?
This question came up yesterday. The mother of the deceased wants to get the house sold. This is her son’s house. Her son left the estate without a will. So probate is going to be required. The grandson is the sole heir. The grandson wants nothing to do with this whole probate process. He’s in the army. He’s out of the country.
So what do you do? There are very limited things you can do if you are not related. The best solution is for the grandson to give the grandmother a limited power of attorney dealing only with the affairs of the estate. That way she can open the probate case. She can close out the estate and close out the probate case and bring everything to its conclusion. This will allow the grandmother to be named either as a personal representative or in the case of a summary probate case where it’s a much smaller amount involved, then the administrator.
Once appointed the grandmother could then do everything she needs to do to take care of the estate and get the probate case closed out. Now, a probate attorney would be highly recommended in this case to represent the grandmother. When the grandma is the personal representative or the summary administrator, she is not entitled to anything from the estate. The only thing she’s entitled to is a stipend, if you will, a bit of a pay for performing these duties and reimbursement of whatever expenses she’s got. The grandson is going to need to agree to everything that she is doing. So it would be a good idea to avoid conflict down the road. For her to hire an attorney.
Hence, you have a third party who is a neutral third party that can address anything that happens between the grandmother and the grandson. But tough case. Like I say, the grandson’s got to do something because he is the sole heir. And like I said, the best solution in this case is for him to give the grandmother a limited power of attorney so she can execute the affairs of the estate.
And we’ll see you next Friday with another good question from sellers just like you. Now, if you have know somebody who wants to sell their house, have them give us a call at 352-480-0955. Or go to our website, www.rapidhomedeals.com. And we’ll see you next Friday. Bye.