I’m Executor…Now What? A California Executor’s Duties

[Music] Hi this Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video I want to talk to you a little bit about the duties that an executor has in California so if you have a will or if you have a decedent dying without a will there is state must go through probate which is really just a court process where the court oversees the transfer of assets to the beneficiaries under the will or to the heirs of law if there's no will and there's a lot of duties that an executor has in a California probate but there's six main points that I want to at least make sure you're familiar with if you're going to be an executor or if you're a beneficiary of an estate you want to make sure your executor is taking the right actions the first thing that an executor must do is take control of the estate assets so they have to go out and collect all the assets and safeguard put them into new bank accounts in the name of the estate and make sure that everything is safe and collected that's called marshalling the assets and so the executor has to go out and marshal all of the assets and make sure that they have control of the estate assets the next thing the executor has to do is they have to do an inventory and appraisal of those assets so they have to list out every asset that they came into possession of and they have to have those assets appraised if the asset is cash the executor can appraise that themselves because cash is cash but if the asset is some anything else like real property stocks and bonds jewelry they have to send that out to the probate referee and get a formal appraisal of those assets and then that inventory and appraisal has to be written down on a form and submitted to the court and hand it out and served on all the beneficiaries so everybody knows what's what assets are part of that estate and what assets that executor is going to take control of and manage the next thing the executor has to do is notify creditors so one of the main reasons why we have probate in California is to protect creditors and so everybody who is a creditor of that decedent anybody who is a known creditor must receive notice from the executor that the estate has been opened and that the creditor has a right to file a claim in that estate and that has to be done within a certain amount of time after the estate is opened and then every creditor has four months after letters are issued after the probate starts to be able to file a creditors claim with that probate estate the next thing the executor must do is ready the estate for distribution so if there's any assets that need to be sold or dealt with in any way if there's any legal claims that need to be litigated the executor needs to make sure all of that is done because eventually the assets need to be gathered together and distributed to the beneficiaries and so all of those management issues need to be taken care of before that time the next duty the executor has is to provide an accounting to all the beneficiaries and every executor is required to provide information and an accounting to the beneficiaries unless the beneficiaries voluntarily waive in accounting which sometimes does occur in certain situations but the executor should keep very detailed records of all actions taken for the estate because chances are an accounting will be required and finally an executor has to close the estate and actually distribute the assets out give the assets out to the beneficiaries and that's the final step of probate and once those assets are passed out to the beneficiaries the beneficiaries have to sign a receipt acknowledging that yes I did receive the assets that were meant for me and those receipts are filed with the court and only then is the executor relieved of duty and no longer required to act and so those are the six basic steps that every executor must take for a California program. [Music] [Applause] [Music]