Washington Probate > Probate for 995 + Costs > Additional Services

Examples of Additional Probate Services Provided

1.  For Any Estate:

• Publishing a Probate Notice to Creditors.
  
  Although not a legal requirement & not publishing one will not be seen as not being diligent, you may want to publish a Notice to Creditors; if so, it is required to be published once a week for three successive weeks in a legal newspaper in the county of the Decedent's residence at death.  That reduces the time a creditor has for presenting a valid claim against the estate from two years after death to four months after first publication of the Notice.  The benefit of publishing is that you may close the estate after the expiration of the four-month claims period with confidence that no further claims should be able to be validly presented --- otherwise, you'll need to wait until two years after death.
  
  We provide what we call Creditors Claim Services, which includes:
   

  • Preparing & sending the Notice to Creditors to a legal newspaper for publication.

  • Sending to you a detailed letter of instructions for paying Decedent's bills, giving actual notice of the probate to potential creditors, and dealing with creditors and their claims.

  • Receiving Creditor's Claims.

  • Mailing a copy of each Creditor's Claim received to you.

   

  for a flat fee of 195 plus the cost of publication, 108 if publication is made in King County, so the total cost to publish a Notice to Creditors is 303 (generally more if publication is required elsewhere).  Unless you have intimate knowledge of the Decedent's finances in the last year or two of his or her life, for example, if you have been paying his or her bills & other expenses, we generally recommend publishing the Notice --- at 303, it's cheap "insurance" against 20 months' worth of potential claims.

   

  An additional fee is charged, for example, if time is incurred to pay, allow, negotiate, compromise, or reject a claim.
   

• Transferring Real Property, such as Decedent's home, from the estate to heirs, beneficiaries, or a buyer.
  
  Our services include:
   

  • Preparing a Deed to transfer the real property.

  • Sending it to you for signature, notarization, and return to us for recording.

  • Preparing its associated Real Estate Excise Tax Affidavit.

  • Recording the Deed with the County Recorder.

  • Mailing you the recorded Deed for your files.
     

  If you can supply us with a copy of the Deed by which Decedent took title to the property & a copy of the relevant County Property Tax statement for the property, our typical charge is approximately 400 plus the cost of recordation, typically 73 (for a two-page Deed).
   

• Determining the true owner of any asset in or claimed by the estate.
   

• Dealing with an estate having medical reimbursement issues with the WA Dept. of Social & Health Services.
   

• Dealing with an insolvent estate (one that has more debts than assets).
  
  Nonintervention Powers are unavailable for an insolvent estate.  Without Nonintervention Powers, an estate is required to be closed by preparing and filing with the Court a Report and Account of the PR's Actions & Petition for Final Distribution, setting a hearing for the Petition, sending notice of the hearing to all heirs, beneficiaries, and creditors, and publishing the notice once in a legal newspaper.  This results in additional fees plus the cost of publication, typically 35.
   

• Responding to any disagreement, objection, contest, or dispute.

2.  Specifically for a Testate Estate:  Additional fees & costs should be minimal specifically for a testate estate.  Rare exceptions include:

• If its witnesses have not signed the Will as required for its admission to probate (that is, if the Will is not "self-proving"), so they will need to be located to sign a Declaration of Witnesses to Decedent's Will.
   

• If only a copy (not the original) of the Will is available, so additional work will be required to admit the copy of the Will to probate.
   

• If for whatever reason, the admission of the Will to probate requires a noticed hearing (for example, Decedent died with a surviving spouse who is not named in the Will as the Personal Representative & the Will is offered for probate within 40 days of the Decedent's death).

3.  Specifically for an Intestate Estate:  Intestate estates usually cost more in both fees and costs than do testate estates for two reasons:

• The Court almost always requires a Probate Bond in an intestate estate.
  
  Exception: the PR is the surviving spouse and the estate consists of nothing but community property, resulting in all the estate passing to the surviving spouse by inheritance.
  
  Our typical charge for obtaining the Bond is approximately 400 plus the cost of the Bond, for example, 100 for a 10,000 Bond.
   

• An intestate PR does not automatically qualify for Nonintervention Powers.
  
  Exception: the PR is the surviving spouse, the estate is all community property, and there are no children of the Decedent by a prior marriage.
  
  Obtaining Nonintervention Powers requires either:
   

  • A Consent signed by every heir.  Usual fees to obtain the Consents are minimal.

  • A second, noticed hearing, if all the required Consents can't be obtained.  Our typical charge for a second, noticed hearing to obtain Nonintervention Powers is approximately 500.

4.  Excess Time:  We can offer a flat fee to open a probate estate because we have opened over 1,000 of them in the past five years & know how long it typically takes us to do it.  Occasionally, a client presents an atypical set of circumstances requiring substantially more time than usual to open the probate; for example, presenting numerous or lengthy questions or requesting an office consultation or personal presentation of the documents to the Court.  These will result in additional fees.

5.  Overriding Principles:

• "Basic Services" are those services required to satisfy the laws of Washington to open a typical Basic, Simple, Problem-free, Uncontested Estate opened with our Usual Process.
   

• Additional Services are those services provided to deal with any issue presented by the particular facts or circumstances of the specific Decedent and his or her estate or proposed Personal Representative.

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