Mother in law passed away Sunday, probate questions

[TR Custom Parts]

Sadly my mother in law passed away Sunday from cancer. Before the mother in law jokes start, let me say she was a great person and never gave me any grief in the 15 years I knew her.

We brought her up from FL to live with us this past July and she was doing OK up to about 3 weeks ago. My wife has been taking care of her up until Friday when we had to put her in Hospice. She went peacefully on Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, nothing was prepared on what to do upon her death. She still has a house in FL that is empty and has been for sale since June 07. It is only in her name. I drove her car up from FL and that is also in her name.

My wife got power of attorney but I guess that becomes null and void once the person passes away so I guess everything goes into probate.

We have no clue on how to proceed on things and how this works, pretty sure it will end up being complicated since she passed away here in CT and her property is in FL.

Anybody go thru this in the past and have any advice?

 

[corsair231]

Sorry about your mother-in-law. I had a brother that died from cancer and I know what kind of strain it can put on a family. I'll say a quick prayer for ya'll. As far as the probate I can't help but I can tell you to be prepared for anything. My mother was in a rest home for about three months before she passed. She was on a fixed income so she qualified for medicade (medicare??) help with the cost. When she passed my sister got my mom's house in the will (she already lived there) but she had to pay back mom's medicade bills before she could claim it. The house was still in my mom's name when she died so the government was going to seize it and sell it off to recoup the medicade benifits my mom received.

All $3,300.00 of it.

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Retain a lawyer that specializes in probate matters, and forego the aggravation.

 

[gnxtc2]

Retain a lawyer that specializes in probate matters, and forego the aggravation.

Exactly, retain a lawyer. Same thing happened when my father passed.

Billy T.
gnxtc2@aol.com

 

[TR Custom Parts]

Exactly, retain a lawyer. Same thing happened when my father passed.

Billy T.
gnxtc2@aol.com

More than likely that is probably the route we are going to end up taking. She had a will that just specified that her assets be split 50/50 between my wife and her sister. One problem is that her sister was appointed the executor of the will which was done in 1996 and the sister has had her share of problems and is basically unfit to execute anything! Should be interesting.:frown:

 

[dgoodhue]

If you have a trusted accoutant, you will need to do an estate return as well. The accountant should also be able to recommend a fair estate attorney (or whatever the offical name is). I worked as an accountant for a couple years (so this is from perspective), from my point of view I could which attorney's were wasting time (ie billing more time for needless work).

If your mother inlaw doesn't have any or much retirement savings someone will probably need to supplement fund for housing taxes and mortgage if she had one. If she owes more money (loans/credit cards/hospital bills) than what she has for equity and cash, then you don't want to do this as she will just end up being bankrupt. From my expereince these do take time to sort out, usually umcomplication uncontested estates take more than a 1 year.