The Expert Podcast

If you are part of any type of estate where there's a person in your family that's deceased or maybe is older in a UH retirement home or under care, you want to start looking at what's going to happen when that estate is settled. Some of the estate settlement happens before a person dies and some happens afterwards, and there's a lot of fraud that goes on within a state. Sometimes family members or other heirs will steal money, and sometimes they'll convert assets that don't belong to them. And whether you're the executive in the estate or not, you want to make sure that you're paying attention to what's happening with the records, with the assets, with the money, and even with real estate, so that it goes to the right place.

The worst thing in the world that could happen is if somebody dies and they have a will, whether it's a documented will or just what they wanted to happen, and the money and assets go to somebody else because that's not what the person wanted. Even if the other potential heirs say, "Hey, that's okay, let it slide. Don't rock the boat," remember that the will is not just the name of a piece of paper. A will is what that person wills to happen. It's what they want to have happen. And if you let something else happen by taking the money or somebody else stealing the money, that's kind of disrespecting the wishes of that deceased person.

So what do you do to make sure it's settled properly? This is a great article from Klingers, which is an excellent financial magazine that talks about some of the things that have to happen when an estate is settled. Number one is starting out with what you expect to have happened, right? You don't want to have any confusion or questions. If you are not the executive but are worried that maybe the executive or some other people are going to do things that aren't proper, you want to set the expectation right up front that you will be monitoring this, right? You will be communicating and asking questions, and you want to have answers. You don't want things to happen that are not supposed to happen.

You also want to get an asset search done as soon as possible. Even before, if you know a person's going to die, you want to have an asset search done so you know what the proper assets are that should be distributed. So that way, if they go into places they're not supposed to, you know who they are beforehand. Obviously, you want to get copies of the death certificate. That's not hard. Here's the part that's important. You want to locate the estate documents. Is there a will? Is there a trust? Is there a letter of instructions? You want to get copies of all of the details of that person's life and what they want, which is related to step four.

You want to get copies of the assets, financial institutions, and life insurance. Financial institutions include bank accounts, retirement accounts, CDs, and stocks. You want to get copies of all of those so that you can see if there is any funny business going on. Did somebody transfer money? Did somebody write checks? Did somebody close an account? If you get one of those statements, ask the institution to go back six or eight months because many times before a person dies, there may be a relative or somebody else that's improperly switching money around.

Contacting Social Security is something that's not really crucial because it'll happen kind of by itself when somebody dies, but you do want to start that process now. You want to look at related documents and debts. Are there credit cards? Are there debts owed? Are there mortgages? Because those have to come out for the most part before money is distributed. You want to get deeds to the house. You want to run a title search on the property to make sure there were no recent transfers.

You want to do a reverse title search based on a name to make sure that the person didn't own property six months ago that magically disappeared. You want to know if there's a home equity loan that was taken out that shouldn't have been taken out in somebody else's name. You want to get all that documentation so you can have the proper disposition of that case. Even if you're not the executive, if you're an interested party, you want to shadow the executive to make sure they're doing it right and they're not making a mistake, but also that nobody is trying to artificially do a fraudulent conveyance of assets.

This is something important. You want to get professional assistance. So you want to get an accountant, an investigator, a forensic investigator to look at all these things, and maybe an attorney to make sure that all of the documents are done properly. You might want to even look at the documents to make sure they're authentic. You might want to look at other public records to make sure there's no criminal action, lawsuit, or civil judgment that could affect the case. If you have a relative, descendant, or somebody who has a sudden financial debt, that might be an incentive for them to try to take money. So if you find out that you know Cousin Bob all of a sudden has a $200,000 judgment against them, you might want to keep an eye on Bob to make sure he's not trying to take that money from the estate.

Estate fraud is extremely common, and we get 20 or 30 calls a day about suspected estate fraud. For the cases we actually take that we investigate, it's almost always that there's some improper transfer. So keep an eye on it and make sure no one's getting away with it. Remember, these are people who are in your family. If they are stealing from you, you want to know about it. You don't want to be going to the family reunion or Christmas dinner and thinking that person has got your back when they just stole $50,000 or $100,000 from you or transferred a vehicle or real estate without your knowledge that should go to you. Look, if you want that person to have the money, that's fine, but first have the estate handled properly, get the money to where it's supposed to go based on the wishes and the last will of that deceased person, and then give the money to somebody else. Don't let them just take it on their own, because that disrespects the relative who died.