Trust & Estate Administration
Everything that has to be done after a death, done in order.
Locating the assets, paying what is owed, and getting the rest to the right people, without the family coming apart over any of it.
You are grieving, and you are being asked to do paperwork.
That is the part nobody warns you about. In the same weeks you are trying to absorb a death, you are expected to find accounts you did not know existed, keep bills paid on a house nobody lives in, and make sure the right things reach the right people without anyone falling out over it.
Whether your loved one set up a trust or not, there is an estate, and it has to be handled with some care. That work has a name. If there is a trust, it is trust administration, carried out by the trustee under the terms of the document. If there is no trust, or if assets were left outside the one that exists, it is estate administration, and it usually runs through the court process called probate.
Either way, you do not have to learn it as you go. We work with the trustee, the personal representative, the beneficiaries, and the family accountant or financial advisor, and we keep the sequence straight so things happen in the order the law expects them to.
What the work is
The list nobody hands you
Finding and valuing what there is
Identifying and collecting the assets, and establishing what they were worth, including appraisals of major property where the estate needs a clear number.
Paying what is owed
Debts, expenses, and taxes paid out of estate and trust assets, with regular accountings so nobody is guessing where the money went.
The assets that pass outside the documents
Advice on jointly held property, life insurance, and retirement benefits, which move by title or beneficiary form and never touch the will or the trust.
Tax filings
Preparation of state and federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax returns where the estate requires them, and planning to keep estate and income tax exposure down where there is room to.
Telling everyone who has to be told
Notifying the heirs and beneficiaries of the trust or the estate, and staying in contact with them through the administration.
Moving the assets to the right people
Retitling property into the names of the beneficiaries, or into a continuing trust where the documents call for the assets to be held rather than handed over.
If you were named trustee
Being named is an honor. Serving is a job.
A trustee has to carry out the trust’s instructions, and is legally responsible for doing so within the bounds of state and federal law. It is a real level of responsibility, and a real level of liability, handed most often to someone who has never done anything like it.
Our job is to stand next to you in it. We handle the technical work, keep the accountings clean, and make sure the decisions you sign your name to are ones you understand. You should not have to become an expert in fiduciary duty during the worst year of your life.
Common questions
What trustees and executors ask us
I was named trustee. Do I really need a lawyer for this?
Not always, and we will say so when the answer is no. But a trustee is a fiduciary, which means the duties are owed to the beneficiaries and enforceable by them. Most people named trustee have no background in the legal, tax, and accounting work the role actually requires. Having a lawyer alongside you is less about complexity than about not being the only person responsible for getting it right.
Is trust administration the same thing as probate?
No. Probate is the court process for assets owned in the deceased person's name alone. Trust administration happens outside court, under the terms of the trust document. Many families end up doing some of each, because one or two assets were never retitled into the trust. If that is your situation, the probate page walks through the court half.
There is a trust, but the house was never put into it. What now?
This is the single most common way a good plan comes apart, and it is usually discovered at exactly the wrong moment. An asset left outside the trust generally has to go through probate to move, even though the rest of the estate does not. It is fixable. It just needs to be found early, so the two processes can be run alongside each other instead of one after the other.
How do we keep this from turning into a family fight?
Mostly through information and pace. Conflict between beneficiaries tends to grow in silence, when one person is handling everything and the others are guessing at what is happening to their parent's house or their parent's accounts. Regular accountings, plain updates to everyone entitled to one, and a neutral third party doing the explaining take most of the heat out of it.
Are there deadlines we could already have missed?
There are deadlines in this work, and they vary with what the estate holds and whether a court process is involved. If time has already passed, that is worth raising on the first call rather than worrying about privately. Most of what people fear they have ruined is recoverable, and knowing where you stand is better than not.
What does this cost?
It depends on what the estate holds and how much of it has to move through court. We will give you the shape of it before you engage us, and administration expenses are ordinarily paid from the estate or trust rather than out of your own pocket. Our pricing page sets out how we quote work generally.
Let us take the next step for you.
Fifteen minutes on the phone, no charge. Bring what you have, including nothing at all, and we will tell you what happens next.