jebmke wrote: ↑Wed May 12, 2021 1:41 pm
celia wrote: ↑Wed May 12, 2021 2:10 am
If your executor or trustee won't do this basic task, you should choose someone else.
In any event, all the accounts were locked down until the court approved her as representative and even then, meticulous details on disbursements for holdover expenses and final expenses had to be supplied.
Accounts that have specific *named individuals* designated as beneficiaries (such as most IRAs, 401ks,life insurance, TOD/POD transfer on death or payable on death titled bank and brokerage accounts) are not locked down, since they are not actually part of the estate.
If an individual knows that they were named as the beneficiary of an account, e.g., they are in possession of a bank or brokerage statement that listed the beneficiaries and their name is among them, they can present that information along with evidence of death and get access to their designated share of the account even before the executor is appointed (which can take some time.)
When my husband was settling his late mother's estate, he noticed that a number of her accounts (bank accounts, brokerages, and an IRA) were titled in this way (with him and his only sibling designated as 50-50 beneficiaries) so he and his sibling were able to obtain access to those funds pretty much immediately on demand and presentation of the death certificate.
It took longer for him to get a letters of official appointment as executor by the probate court and get access to the remaining financial accounts as well as title to other assets such as his mother's house, its contents, and her cars. (He had been named co-executor in his mother's will but the other named co-executor in the will was an institution, which was not actually interested in carrying out its duties and everything was out-of-state and cumbersome. Eventually a representative of the institution signed an official legal statement declining to serve as co-executor and my husband was able to function independently as the official sole executor of the estate.)
But at least some of the assets were easily accessible even before the estate executorship was official, so he and his sister had funds to keep the necessary bills paid (taxes, insurance, utilities) on his mother's house even before the executorship issue was resolved.