To understand the rights of an estate beneficiary, one has to understand which assets an estate includes. When a decedent passes away, the decedent’s “estate” comprises all the assets the decedent included in their will and any other assets the decedent owned, excluding property in the decedent’s trust or assets that have designated beneficiaries.
Estate assets generally pass through the a formal court-supervised process called probate. Without the probate process, the personal representative of the decedent’s estate (i.e., the executor/administrator) generally will not be able to transfer estate assets to the beneficiaries.
Who is the executor? They typically are nominated in the decedent’s will to preside over the decedent’s estate during probate. Before they can step into their role, however, the court will have to formally appoint them. Most of the time, the court goes along with the decedent’s choice of executor unless it has reason to believe the nominee is unfit to serve, the nominee refuses their appointment, or their appointment is successfully disputed by interested parties. The administrator/executor is responsible for gathering the decedent’s assets, paying their creditors and accounting for their assets, among other things.
Because probate can not only delay distributions to estate beneficiaries but be expensive and time-consuming, many people seek out ways to avoid it. Probate is also expensive and burdensome for the courts, so the California Legislature has created mechanisms by which probate could potentially be expedited or avoided entirely.
For instance, if an estate is worth less than $184,500, a small estate affidavit could potentially be used to altogether avoid probate. Likewise, if a portion of a decedent’s estate is supposed to pass to the decedent’s surviving spouse, a spousal property petition could potentially be used to directly transfer the property to their surviving spouse without a formal probate.
A trust and estate administration lawyer can help estate beneficiaries seeking to avoid probate determine whether doing so is possible.
