California Duties and Liabilities of Personal Representative–Form DE-147

I just keep David cent Albertson and Davidson in this video we're going over a form that you're gonna need when you file your petition for probate and that's form de 147 which is duties and responsibilities of a personal representative so let's take a look at that form and we'll see what it does and how you need to fill it out and file it we start on Google and we just do a search for Judicial Council forms of California all your forms are going to be here very easy to find when you just come to the court website and we're gonna go down to probate and decedent's estates and we'll see those forms now I already know the form number is de 147 duties and responsibilities but if you didn't know that you could do a search by name or by form number up here and you could locate it so let me go over to the form and we'll blow this up a little bit so what we're looking at here is that when you file a petition for probate the court wants to be sure that the personal representative the person who's going to manage that estate understands or at least has a basic understanding of what their duties and obligations are and that's what this form is for so it it's going to go through just kind of the highlights of the duties and responsibilities of an executor and then that named executor is gonna have to sign this form and file it with the court so that the court knows that they at least know a little something about what they have to do as an executor or administrator and if you don't have this form then the courts not going to accept your petition for probate filing so we start up at the top and we're just gonna fill it out and obviously if you're representing yourself you just put your own name and address in here since I'm an attorney I'm gonna put in my law firm information and my mailing address where I like all of my oops court mailings to go and you're gonna want to fill out your telephone number your email address all of this stuff so that the court and the other parties can get ahold of you when they need to if you're representing yourself you can just type in pro per here or you can put in your own name so I would put in my own name like that if I'm representing myself if I'm obviously an attorney I'm representing somebody else I'm gonna put in their name and we're gonna say this is in Los Angeles County whatever County you're in just go ahead and fill that in and then you need to put in both the street address and the mailing address for the court where you're going to be filing your petition for probate if you don't know the branch name don't worry about it you can look it up on the website the courts website of whatever county you're in or you can just leave a blank if there's not not every court has a branch name and then the estate of we've been using the example of Rachel Smith and then you're gonna need to put in your case number now you may not have your case number yet because you're usually filling out this form and taking it with you to the court when you file your petition for probate so you can leave that blank and the court will fill that in for you or you can fill it in after you file your petition for probate in the court assigns it a case number you obviously need to be giving this to the personal representative and that personal representative needs to read this this is really critical important information and it's not even all of the duties that a personal representative has but it's some of the most important duties that they should at least know about for example they have to notify creditors they must ensure a state property they have to keep good records because they're gonna have to account at some point at the end of the case most likely they have to inventory and appraise the estate assets I mean managing the estate assets these are critically important the other thing that a lot of people don't know in California is you cannot distribute assets out of a probate estate to the beneficiaries without court approval you have to have a court order for that you can't pay yourself or your attorney a probate fee without court approval you have to have a court or for that so California's probate process is very restrictive and there's a lot of states out there that have kind of liberalized their probate process and made it easier to do outside of court California hasn't really done that almost everything we do has to be done in court you can be given some powers to do some things without court approval but all the important stuff especially opening the estate approving the assets in the estate closing the estate paying everybody out paying yourself paying your attorneys it all takes court oversight in a court order so it's it's it's a different process than a lot of states have nowadays so you're going to give this to the personal representative or you're gonna review it if you're the personal representative read through it make sure you understand it and then down here you're gonna acknowledge that you received it so I have petitioned the court to be appointed as a personal representative my address and telephone number are so you're gonna put in your address and telephone number whoever the personal representative is and I acknowledge that I have received a copy of the statement of the duties and liabilities of the office a personal representative then you're gonna date it and you're going to type in your name and then you're gonna print it out and sign it and so that's really it's a simple form in the sense that you don't have to fill out a whole lot the form is just kind of a notice that the executor needs to sign or the personal representative needs to sign acknowledging that notice but it's a very crucially important form because if the personal representative doesn't know this information they're gonna be in for a lot of trouble so you'll save this form you'll print it out take it to the court with you the court will stamp it up in this area here this blank area and then you'll file it with the case number you'll be good to go. [Music] [Applause] [Music]