Two Questions To Ask a Deceased Estate Lawyer if You Are the Beneficiary of a Person's Estate

If you are one of the beneficiaries of a deceased's person's estate, here are some questions you might want to ask a deceased estate lawyer.

How long will it take to administer the estate?

You might want to ask the lawyer how long it will take to administer the estate. This can depend on how wealthy the deceased person was, how wide a range of assets they owned, how many debts they had at the time of their death, the complexity of their financial arrangements and how clear they were about their wishes regarding their estate when they wrote their will.

As such, the deceased estate lawyer probably won't be able to give you an exact date. However, after examining the will and taking a look at an overview of the deceased's estate, they should be able to offer you a rough deadline for when the administering of the estate will be completed (based on their experience of handling the estates of clients with similar financial situations in the past).

You might find it helpful to have an approximate idea of when you'll receive your part of the estate if, for example, you're planning to use the inheritance for a substantial purchase and need to know when you're likely to be able to make this purchase or if you expect to receive a property that belonged to the deceased and would like to know when you can start trying to sell it or when you can move into it.

May I have a copy of the will?

You may also want to have the deceased estate lawyer provide you with a copy of the will. This could be useful if you're confused about why, for example, you were named as the beneficiary of an asset that you were expecting to be given to another beneficiary (after reading the will, you might find that this happened because, for instance, the deceased had another similar asset that they decided to bequeath to another person instead).

Reading a copy of the will in full and seeing who else is on the list of beneficiaries could also be helpful if you would like to discuss the deceased estate assets with other people who were close to the deceased, but you're unsure who is or is not a beneficiary and do not want to upset those who were not included in the will by mentioning which part of the estate you're going to receive.

About Me

Human Resources: How to Hire and Fire

Hello, my name is James. I own a medium-sized company. When I first started out, it was just me and my tools. However, as the company became more successful, I had to start hiring other people. At first, most of the people who came to work for me were old friends, so I didn't worry about contracts. We just shook hands and had a beer. This worked fine until I had a dispute over pay with one of my employees. I got in touch with an HR consultant who helped me to put the correct HR procedures in place to protect myself and my business. I decided to start this blog to advise others about how to hire and fire staff.

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