Walk It Through: After a Death
A power of attorney, a guardianship, a house with no will, a small estate, and the letter from the state.
Dad is fine, mostly. Mum wants everything signed while he still can, and your name is going on the form.
Two things a person in this spot might do. Picking one shows what the law says about it.
The surviving spouse's other entitlements, the family allowance and the right to purchase the residence, how assets are valued and which are counted, each probate court's forms and fees, emergency and interim guardianships with a guardian's bond and annual reporting, revocation and successor agents under a power of attorney, and the look back period and transfer rules on a medicaid application are not covered here. Transferring a house to avoid recovery has consequences of its own and frequently backfires.
A practice walkthrough, not a prediction of how any real one will go. Legal information, not legal advice.
Words this turns on
6 words · tap one for its definition
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
- Attorney in factThe person a power of attorney names to act for somebody else. Under a durable power of attorney for health care, that is who decides about treatment when the principal cannot.
- Prima facieEstablished unless something is shown against it. Where a speed limit is prima facie, exceeding it makes out the violation and leaves room to show the speed was reasonable and proper for the conditions.
- Exigent circumstancesAn emergency that excuses the warrant requirement, such as an immediate risk to life, a suspect in flight, or evidence about to be destroyed.
- IntestateDying without a valid will, so an estate is divided by the statute instead of by the person's own instructions.
- Per stirpesA way of dividing an estate where a deceased person's share passes down their own line rather than being shared out among the survivors at that level.
- Release from administrationA probate court order letting a small estate skip full administration. The ceiling is thirty five thousand dollars in assets, or one hundred thousand where a valid will left all of them to a person named in it as the surviving spouse who survives.