California Probate Order and Letters–Forms DE-140 and DE-150

I just Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video we're going to be going over two forms de 140 which is the order for probate and de 150 which are the letters testamentary or letters of administration both of these forms are going to come at the end of your petition for probate once the court has a hearing on the petition and once the court grants the petition and allows the petition to move forward but these forms typically should be prepared at the time you're preparing your petition for probate there's some courts some counties that require you to submit copies of the order and the letters at this at the front of your action so when you go down and you file your petition for probate they want to see the order and the letters and you will submit those to the court as well you won't file them with the court technically because orders aren't filed until they're signed by the judge and the judge isn't going to sign your order until your petition is granted after notice is giving and given and a proper hearing has had but the courts a lot of Courts still want these forms submitted so that they have them and they're ready to go when the time comes some courts do not want you to submit the order in letters so every courts a little different but you should prepare them and have them ready to go because you're gonna need them eventually sooner or later your petition will be granted so let's go to Google and we're going to type in judicial council forms and we're gonna go straight to the courts website and we'll just gonna go to probate decedent's estates that's where all of our probate forms are going to be found and there's two different forms we're dealing with and I'll explain what the difference is in a minute so there's de 1:40 the order for probate and then there's de 150 and the letters so let's take a look at what these documents are so here's the order for probate form de 140 so every time the court takes an action it does so by issuing an order so you file a petition for probate and your petition is asking the court will you please open probate will you admit a will to the probate and make sure that the Wills valid so we can manage the estate under the terms of the will if there is a will or if there isn't a will if you're doing an intestate estate as it's called then can you just open probate and allow us to administer the estate under the intestate laws under the the probate code that's what you're asking the court to do with the petition for probate the order is then the courts issuing its directive so if the court says yes I'm gonna grant this petition the judge says that then you're gonna do it in the form of an order so you fill out the order because you're the petitioning party but the court will review it and sign it and once the judge signs it then it's filed in your probate action and it becomes an order of the court but the order does not allow the executor or administrator to actually go out and take possession of the estate assets that's where the letters come in so once the order is signed by the judge and filed then the clerk of the court has to issue letters and letters is a very old-fashioned term and people get confused by this because they'll go to try to get a decedent's bank account and the bank will say well you need letters and then they'll call up a lawyer and say can you write me a letter I need a letter it's not that type of letter it's not a written letter this is something that issues from the court and letters the way to think of these is that this is the authorization document that gives the personal representative the right to go out and to obtain control of all of the decedent's assets so they can go to the bank with this document called letters and they can gain control of that money they can use these letters to be able to control real property and do a sale and close escrow all because of the power that is issued when these letters are signed by the clerk of the court but letters can't issue until the order is first entered and so let's start with the order and so I filled out the all my information at the top we've seen this before and I just realized I misspelled the courthouse we'll put an e in there and then we're using the estate of Rachel Smith and this is Bob Smith bringing the petition you're gonna put in your case number if you're filing this order after the petition has been granted and then you'll know your case number if you're submitting it to the court at the time you're filing your petition for probate then you'll just leave that blank the order is going to mirror the petition so everything you asked for in the petition you're now going to mirror that in the order so this is an order appointing either an executor administrator with will annexed or administrator if you watch my video on the de 111 petition for probate I go into an explanation of what these different terms mean so whatever you did on the petition you you had to select one of these on the petition you're going to select the same thing on the order and then you're going to select whether or not the court approved an order authorizing independent administration of the estate either with full authority or limited authority so if you're submitting a petition where you asked for this then you should check it in the order as well if you've already had a hearing and the court has granted this then obviously you will want to check these two boxes and then you're going to put in the date of the hearing this this is a past date where the hearing took place if you're submitting this order at the time you file your petition for probate so the hearing hasn't happened yet you'll just leave this blank but if the hearings already happened and the court approved your order and granted it then you're gonna put in the date that is in the past where the court granted your order so at this on this date at this time in this department you know and whatever the judge is in that department they made the following order so the Court finds number one that all notice is required by law have been given that's important you have to give notice decedent died on so whatever date decedent died on you put that here and a resident of the California County named above because we're in Los Angeles County on this example and so that's where you need to say that they were resident decedent died either intestate or test a so intestate means no will test date means a will and if it's test date then the will was dated on whatever date it was dated so let's say it was February 1 of 2005 and you put in any cotta Souls consoles are just amendments I was admitted by Pro to probate by minute order on so the minute order is just the written document that the court puts out on the day of the hearing or the court granted your petition and the court makes a note of every action it takes and that note is called a minute order this is going to be an official order so once you fill this out it'll replace the minute order all right so the court orders that somebody in our case bob smith that's our petitioner and the person who we want to have act as personal representative so bob smith is appointed personal representative and again it's either going to be executor of the will administrator with will a next administrator go to my video on de 111 petition for probate and you can see what those terms mean so in our example bob smith is the executor and letters shall issue on qualification which means that you have to do certain things to get your letters with full authority if that's what the court granted with limited authority and then down number five either bond is not required or if the court did require a bond then bond is fixed at a certain dollar amount so let's say the court said well i want you to have a hundred and twenty thousand dollar bond then that's what you put right there as part of the order they also have an option of putting something in a blocked account that doesn't typically happen but if the court were to order some of the estate money in a blocked account then you would indicate that right here with c and d is the personal representative is not authorized to take possession of money or other property without a specific court order that those are rare cases but if the court were to order that then you would check that and then the courts gonna give you your probate referee a probate referee is just the person who's going to appraise all the assets for you and you're gonna have to use that person to praise everything in the estate other than cash so even if the estate has publicly traded securities let's say you have an estate that has a thousand shares of Apple stock you can't value that as a personal representative the probate referee has to value that and the courts going to assign you a referee and so the court will put in the name of that person right here and then if there's any attachment so sometimes the court will have some special orders or special instructions if that's the case you would put them on an attachment and if there are attachments you have to put how many pages are attached and you have to say that the signature of the judge will follow the last attachment so the judge is supposed to sign at the very end of the order and so that's where the judge will sign if there's no attachments then you'll just leave that blank and then obviously the judge will sign here you don't have to sign anything on this so you'll print this form you'll save it you'll give it to the court and once the judge signs right here then it'll be filed and once it's filed you'll have your order once you have your order then you can go over to your letters and this is where the court clerk is going to issue you letters that will give you the authorization to do everything you need to do so again we're dealing with the estate of Rachel Smith we'll put in our case number if we have it and then we're gonna say the type of letters we want we either want letters testamentary letters of administration with well annexed love letters of administration or letters of special administration and it just depends on whether or not we're we have a will testamentary means we have a will and the person who is going to be given these letters is named in the will as tax as executor or the person who has given this letters is not named in the will but there is a will but they're still going to manage the will even though they're not named in there as the executor and if there's no will it's just going to be letters of administration so we're going for letters testamentary meaning there's a will and Bob Smith was mentioned in the well so now we're gonna say the last will of decedent named above having been proved meaning that there's an order right here for probate probate really just means proving the will is accurate that's all probate means and so that's what this form is saying is that the Wills been proved is being valid and the court appoints Bob Smith as executor here's these terms again so you got to know what these terms are or the court appoints somebody as administrator all these terms we're doing testamentary so we're always going to be on number one because bob is an executor or if there's a will and then it's going to be administrative will annex to only applies if there's no will so it's an intestate estate or you're doing a special administration then down here the personal rep is authorized under the independent administration of estates act with full authority so these letters are going to issue and everybody who deals with this personal representative is going to know that they have these independent powers and so people have to know that number for the personal rep is not authorized to take possession of money that's a rare case but if that were the case and that would have to be checked so you fill all of that out and then that's pretty much all that you do over here we have the affirmation clause so this is where you're going to fill out if you're an individual I solemnly affirm that I will perform perform the duties of personal rep according to law you're not going to do public administrator because unless you work for the county you're not a public administrator and you're probably not an institutional fiduciary but if you are you would fill that out and so you just put in the date the place where you sign this and you sign it down here the clerk is going to issue these letters so the clerk of the court will sign it they'll put the court seal right here a lot of times people are going like if you go to the bank they're gonna say well we want to see an original of the letters meaning that the seal that the court uses is in red ink so sometimes you have to get multiple originals from the court that have the ready because a lot of people don't want copies they don't want to see black a copy down here which would mean the CEO would be in black ink when you make a copy of it they want to see an original but you can do that you can go to the court the court doesn't call them originals the court calls them certified copies so the certified copies will have a red seal down here they charge for that it's more money to get a certified copy but you're gonna have to have it so it doesn't hurt to start off with four or five six certified copies from the court when you get your letters so you can save this form you can print it once you have your letters issued by the court now you're good to go you can go out you can take possession of the bank accounts the financial accounts the stocks the bonds the real estate and you can manage this estate so that's our discussion of form de 140 order for probate and form de 150 letters either letters testamentary or letters of administration depending on your circumstances that you're going to need in your petition for probate [Music] you.