Just to be clear, this post is not in any way an attempt to garner pity but to help others learn from my experiences.
When my father passed, it wasn't a complete shock as he’d
been fighting cancer for a number of years. As an engineer by training, his
estate was fairly well organized, which greatly simplified things for his wife
after he passed as all the legal and other end of life arrangements and
documents had been prepared. There were of course some snags and surprises here
or there, but for the most part my father had done his best to ease the path
for his wife and heirs after he was gone.
My mother’s passing was more of a shock, but the post-death
situation was even more so. She had not left a will, or any other end of life
legal documents, that we could find when we were able to get to her NYC apartment in
mid-October. The only thing she’d done was pre-pay her funeral expenses. While
this helped, trying to deal with her estate from eight hundred miles away
without those documents was challenging.
As my older brother no longer lives in the country, it fell
to me to take care of things which I had to do remotely and, during the time of COVID-19, with all the shutdowns and restrictions New York City could apply. I
was able to get a copy of her death certificate from the county which enabled
me to contact her creditors and get that part moving.
With the help of a cousin who used to practice family law, I
was able to apply to become Administrator of the estate. This was simplified due to the
value of my mother’s possessions falling below an arbitrary line and therefore considered
a “small” estate. I mailed the paperwork, properly signed and notarized, to the
country court at the end of October.
This is where things took a turn for the surreal. It took
over two business weeks for my paperwork to get from Knoxville Tennessee to New
York City, with half of that just getting from Knoxville to Memphis! But it did finally arrive.
I’d been advised to let some time pass due to the offices
being closed and people working from home, and for three and a-half months I heard nothing. Finally, in
mid-February I called the court, only to get a recording telling me the offices
were still closed and try an email. My first two emails went unanswered, the
third received a terse and uninformative reply. Six weeks after the first
email, I finally managed to reach someone who could help.
At this point, things
started to move faster. It turned out there was a piece of information missing which they’d known about since mid-November
but hadn’t informed me. With that corrected, I was told the paperwork would
be mailed out by the end of the week.
Two weeks later I still hadn’t received anything, so I
emailed again. Someone had forgotten to put it in the mail and I was told it
would go out on the following Monday. It arrived the next Friday.
At this point, it was over seven months since she’d died and
because there was no will or a named beneficiary, we hadn’t been able to clear
out her apartment, close her bank account, order her tombstone, or deal with
half-a-dozen other issues.
A week after the paperwork arrived, we were back up in New
York City working on all those things. While both physically and emotionally
exhausting, the week was very productive, thanks in large part to some wonderful
people who looked for solutions when others would have shrugged their
shoulders.
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| The author's mother's apartment mid-cleanout |
The week after we got back with a carload of books, photos,
and other keepsakes, I was able to get a Federal Tax ID number and open an
estate bank account so I could start dealing with estate expenses and, assuming
there’s anything left, disbursement to my mother’s heirs.
Most of this aggravation could have been avoided if my
mother had legally named a beneficiary or estate executor, and detailed
instructions regarding what she wanted done would have helped even more.
However, as with many people, she didn’t want to consider her own mortality too
closely.
The most important lesson to be learned here is get your legal house in order while you have
time to consider options and make your own decisions. Everyone dies
eventually, so make it easier on those left behind by managing your estate as much
as you can. Additionally, don’t forget to inform responsible parties and update any instructions as circumstances
change.
For a tie-in to Erin’s post on shredders,
cull your old documents regularly. This was not a habit either of my parents
had as we found paperwork, including tax returns, that went back to the 1940s.
Unless you run a business, there’s rarely a need to keep more than seven years
of tax returns or one year of credit card statements, utility bills, etc. Make
it a regular part of your annual routine to purge older papers. Consider it a
favor to your heirs that results in less clutter for you as a bonus feature.
