The Expert Podcast

So what is a surety bond for a probate case? Anytime there's a probate case where there's money being distributed because of a deceased person or death in the family, there's a lot of money at stake. Usually, there's an executive of the estate that parcels out the money to the heirs, who are the people supposed to get the money from the will or the probate. Usually, these are family members, so there's a lot of room for error or even malfeasance.

A surety bond for probate puts up a bond so that if anything goes wrong - if the wrong person gets the money, if somebody steals the money, or if someone intervenes and misdirects assets - there's a bond that makes whole the people who lost out on that. It could be for a guardianship or for an estate. We highly recommend that anytime there's an estate with more than $200,000 worth of assets, there's a surety bond in place for the executive or even for the estate itself. This ensures that if there are any claims later that someone was cheated out of their money - maybe a relative or descendant of the deceased person didn't get what's rightfully theirs - there's a way to make them whole with this surety bond.

If you are in a family where somebody's deceased and there's money going to be distributed in the future, make sure that you find out who the executive of the estate is or who's handling that estate, and ensure that there's a surety bond for that person. Regular reporting is essential; you want to make sure that every month you get a report of the assets, where they're going, and where they're supposed to go, and ensure those two things match up. You also want to probably run an asset search to make sure that all the assets are accounted for.

That surety bond will make sure that if there are any problems, they're handled properly and that there's funding to fix any financial problems that occur because of accidents or intentional theft of an estate.