California Probate Creditor’s Forms

[Music] That is Keith David cent Albertson and Davidson in this video I'm gonna go over the forms that you're going to need to give notice to creditors of a probate estate we'll also discuss the forms that the creditors will ultimately file with the estate if they want to make a claim so let's start off by going to the Judicial Council forms and I just put that search term into Google and I can pull up the courts website that have all of the Judicial Council forms there are services where you can find these forms paid services but I like to go in this way so that you can see that you can get these forms for free you don't have to pay for these so we're going to go down here to probate decedent's estates and we're gonna hit C form and we're going to start with form de one57 this is going to be our notice of administration of the estate so we're going to start off by filling in the name of the estate and you I'm actually having problems typing into this form it's supposed to be a fillable PDF but sometimes these forms don't work that way so if you try to type into this and it doesn't work all you have to do is go over here to the download button and you can download the form to your computer which I've done over here and now it's the same form it looks the same but now we can actually type into the form and plus once you download it then you can save it on your computer so we're gonna deal with the state of Bob Smith we're gonna start by letting everybody know who the personal representative is so we'll say that his wife oops Tina Smith and we'll put her address and her telephone number and we're saying that this person is a personal representative of the estate of and again it's Bob Smith who is deceased and then on number two the personal representative has begun administration of the decedent's estate in the Superior Court County of so you have to say what county are in so if you're in Los Angeles you'll just type Los Angeles County if you're in San Diego if you're sitting in San Mateo or San Francisco just type in the county and then you're gonna put the street address of the courthouse so people know where to send their creditors claim because eventually the creditors are going to have to send you notice but also file a claim with the court so you'll fill out all of the case information and then you have to put in the case number so I'm just going to make up a case number here but obviously you put in the proper case number right there now you're telling the creditor you must file your claim with the clerk with the court clerk addressed an item two ways let's the add the item that we just addressed and you must mail or deliver a copy to the personal representative which would be the address under number one before the last to occur the following dates so there's timelines that the creditors have either four months after the date that letters were issued to the personal representative so if Tina Smith was appointed the personal representative on October 1 let's say then the creditor needs to know that they only have four months after October 1 to file a claim or 60 days after the date of this notice and so you have to put the date this notice is mailed so let's say we mail it on November 1 then that's the date that you have to put in here so the creditor will have 60 days after November 1 or 4 months after October 1 to actually file their claim with the court those are important deadlines and that's why you're sending this is so that the creditor knows those deadlines the law requires you to notify them of that and then you have to have a proof of so this is where you're going to say that how you actually serve this on the creditor and you can fill in your address here this is where the personal representative lives and we'll use the same address that we had up top you don't have to if the person serving this live somewhere else or work somewhere else that's fine and then you notice here it says I serve the foregoing notice of administration to creditors so that's the form that we've just gone over and a blank creditors claim form so you're supposed to send each creditor a form a creditors claim formed in other words you have to make it easy for the creditors there they the law wants the creditors to get the notice and also get the claim form that they have to file to make it very easy for the creditors and I know that sounds funny but that's what a personal representative is required to do and so then they'll either deposit this notice in a sealed envelope in the United States Postal Service or you can place it for mailing at your place of work if you are familiar with that practice and you know that the mail goes out the same day so you'll just check out check one of a or B if you are putting the envelope into a post box yourself then you check 3a if you're putting it in your work mail service you know you hand it to somebody and that goes off to a mail center at your work you'd select three B and then you look going to put the date that you deposited it into the mail which should be the same as what the date that we used above and where you sent it from so that they know where you were at when you sent it and then you'll date it and you're going to type in your name so if Tina was doing this form and B Tina Smith if I was doing this form for Tina then it'd be my name right here and I can't there we go and then I would just sign it and then down here you're gonna put the name and address of each person to whom notice was mailed so this is where you want to have proof that you mailed this and you're gonna send this out to everybody who is required to get notice in order to show that you did this you actually notified the creditor so this is really a pretty simple form you're just kind of laying out who the personal representative is where the court is where the matter is filed and some dates that they have to know in order to file their creditors claim and then you mail it and if you don't have one of these filed with the court then the personal representative could be liable for this debt if the creditor never received notice so that's the notice of administration of the states now let's see what the creditor is going to file in response to that so if a creditor receives that this is then the creditors claim so this is a claim form that the creditor must file if they want to make a claim in the estate its form de 1/72 now the top part here is where the creditor is going to fill in their information so if it's again Chase Bank they're gonna put their address here because they're the ones who ultimately are making a claim on this estate and probably what would happen is it'd be the lawyer for Chase Bank that would file this but anyway the creditor would put their name here you put the again the court that we're dealing with which in our example we were using Los Angeles County so we put that and we put the mailing address right here and the street address the mailing address happened to be the same for LA Central District if your UPS you're not supposed to put Los Angeles there you got to pay attention to the forms all right so the street address and the mailing address are the same in LA they're not the same for every court some courts will have a different mailing address as opposed to a street address just look it up just go to the court website look it up make sure that you have the right information only takes a second to look up that information and then we're gonna say the estate of bob smith and don't forget to put the proper case number you'll know the case number because it'll be on the creditor claim form and then this is where you're going to give details of the claims so the total amount of the claim so if you're a creditor you're gonna say well they owe me you know five thousand dollars the claimants name and in this case we're saying Chase Bank is the claimant and individual an individual or entity doing business under a fictitious name a partnership a corporation or other so in this case Chase Bank is probably a corporation the address of the claimant so that we know where to get a hold of that claimant if we need to talk to them or send them payment and then you have to say whether the claimant is the creditor or a person acting on behalf of the creditor and then the claimant is the personal representative so number five is only if the personal representative or the attorney for the personal representative has a claim against the estate so if your friend owe you money and then they passed away and you just happen to be their executor and you want to be paid back the money erode you can make a claim as a personal rep but you have to notify the court that you are making that claim as personal rep here on our example Chase Bank is not the personal representative so we just leave number five blank number six I'm authorized to make this claim which is Justin do or maybe come do so this is where we want people to say under penalty of perjury that this is a valid claim and then facts supporting the claim are either on reverse or attached we'll get to that in a minute you almost always want to do an attachment so you have to state the facts that support your claim you can't just say you owe me $5,000 you have to explain why the estate or the decedent knows you $5,000 so that the personal representative can evaluate that claim and determine whether they're going to agree to pay it or not and then you're going to put the date so let's say they file it on this day and then the name and title of the person who is filing the claim so if I was filing it on behalf of Chase Bank I might put my name and my title I'm the attorney for Chase Bank and I'd sign it and send it in this is where you can put the facts if you want to you could start here it's usually best to just use an attachment don't even try to use this but you can especially if it's simple you know for Chase Bank they might say we issued a credit card and at the time of death there was charges or total balance in the amount of $5,000 and that's all you would need to fill out if you have a contract you'd explain the contract and it's always a good idea to attach a copy of the contract so that everybody can see exactly why you wrote money and then you're going to mail this you can personally deliver to the personal representative but most time it's just mailed and then we have again another proof of service just like we had on the last form so the person serving this is going to say they their address they're going to say they mailed it they either placed it into a post-office box or they put it into their work system for mailing and it'll show that it was mailed addressed and mailed to the personal representative number one or personally delivered to the personal representative if the creditor prefers to do that you could do it either way and then you'll sign the declaration at the bottom this creditors claim will be mailed to the personal representative but up here this area here is for court filing so you're also going to file this with the court to make sure that the court knows that you have it as a creditor have a claim against the estate and that claim is going to to be dealt with before the estate can close so now that we've made the claim let's look at what the executor does to either accept or reject that claim and that's going to be form de 174 and so if we go over here to de 174 this is the allowance or rejection of creditors claim so this is where a personal representative is either going to look at all the facts and the paperwork that the creditor submitted and say yes this looks valid I'm going to pay it or the personal representative could say no this does not look valid I'm going to reject it or the personal representative could accept it in part and reject it in part I'm going to pay a thousand I'm not going to pay 5,000 so we start off by the personal representative either putting in her own name and this on our example Tina Smith if she represents herself would put her name up here technically a personal representative is supposed to have an attorney but a lot of times people will represent themselves in probate and the court will allow that otherwise it would be the attorneys name so if I was filing this on behalf of Tina Smith then I would just put my name up here and my law firm information and then again you have to put the right court that you're in and all the various addresses depending on what the court addresses are and we're dealing with the state of Bob Smith and we're gonna put in of course the proper case number so it can get filed in the right area this is where the personal rep is gonna either allow or reject the claim so we're gonna put in the name of the creditor Chase Bank the claim was filed on November 15th was the example we were using date of first issuance of letters so the court wants to know was the claim that you're about to accept or reject was it timely okay date of notice of administration that's the first form we looked at and so if you remember we were serving that on November 1 and the court wants to know whether or not this creditors claim came within 60 days of number 4 the date of notice of administration and then you can put the date of decedent's death I'll just keep the first on everything because it makes it easy and then the estimated value of the estate this is where the court wants to know are you accepting a claim that can be covered by this estate or is the claim just too big a total amount of our claim that we're dealing with is $5,000 and then the personal reptile a mizzling is allowed for $5,000 you're just gonna accept all of it or you can say the claim is rejected for $5,000 in which case you wouldn't put anything here so you're just going to reject all of it or you can do any combination so you can say it's allowed for 2000 but its rejected for 3000 so you can allow it and reject part of it and then you have to say the date that the notice of rejection is given and then the personal author rep is authorized to administer under the independent administration of estates Act the court just wants to know whether or not the personal rep has independent powers so if so check that box if not don't check that box you'll know if this is the case because if you go back and look at the letters of administration and it'll tell you whether independent powers were granted so just go ahead and click that box if it is and then we're gonna put the date that we're doing this allowance in rejection and then we're gonna put the name of the personal rep which is Tina Smith and then Tina's gonna sign this now there's certain claims that the court must approve or reject so any claims against the personal representative or any claims that are submitted by an attorney for the personal representative have to be approved or rejected by the court and so that's what this is about down here and then of course we have our purse of mate proof of mailing or personal delivery and we've been over this a couple times now and so you're just gonna say that I mailed it to the creditor and again you deposited it in an actual post-office box or you placed it in your works mailing system and then you're going to put the name of the creditor that you served and you're going to put the address on the envelope the date of mailing the place of mailing or you're gonna personally deliver it to that creditor one way or the other the creditor must receive notice of this allowance or rejection because the creditor may have to take action if you reject their claim and then you're just going to date it and sign it whoever serves this this whole process of notifying creditors having creditors submit a claim and then either allowing or rejecting that claim it's a very important part of probate because until the creditors claims are dealt with you can't close up the estate you can't distribute any of the assets out to the beneficiaries all of this has to be taken care of first so it's really important to get these notices out to creditors as soon as possible once a personal representative is appointed and it's important to pay attention to which creditors choose to file a claim and then it's important that the personal representative decide fairly quickly whether or not they're going to pay that claim so in our example if Chase Bank was going to be paid the whole five thousand for example and none of it was going to be rejected then that creditor knows that they don't really need to do anything their claim has been accepted and they're gonna get payment before the estate closes if their $5,000 claim was rejected for any reason then they're going to have to file a lawsuit within 90 days of receiving that rejection so it's very important that the creditors know that so that they can take action and the personal representative is going to be held liable if they don't give these proper notices out because they could be doing harm to the creditors if they don't handle these things properly so it's very important for a personal rep to take these notices to creditors seriously and to make sure that they're served properly. 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