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.
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
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
21 words
- AccrualThe moment a claim became suable, which is the date every limitations period counts from. Six years on a written contract means six years from accrual, not six years from the agreement.
- Civil forfeitureIn the open meetings section, a fixed sum a court orders a public body to pay to the party who obtained an injunction against it. Five hundred dollars, alongside court costs and reasonable attorney's fees.
- Confirmation of saleThe court order approving a sheriff's sale. It is a separate event from the sale itself, and it is the point at which a foreclosed property stops being redeemable.
- DeficiencyWhat is still owed after collateral has been sold and the proceeds applied. A car sold at auction almost never covers the loan, and the shortfall is pursued afterwards as its own debt.
- Equitable sharesThe basis on which adjoining owners maintain an existing partition fence. What is equitable depends on the circumstances rather than being fixed.
- Executive sessionThe one lawful way a public body closes a meeting. It takes a roll call vote of a majority of a quorum, at a regular or special meeting, for the sole purpose of considering matters the section lists, and the motion has to state which listed purpose it is for.
- Habitual truantA child absent without legitimate excuse for thirty or more consecutive hours, forty two or more hours in a school month, or seventy two or more hours in a school year.
- HarborerSomebody who shelters, protects or exercises control over a dog. The dog bite section makes an owner, a keeper and a harborer liable, and only the first of those three owns the animal.
- Home solicitation saleA sale of consumer goods or services where the seller personally solicits at the buyer's residence and the agreement is given there, or where the buyer's agreement is made at a place other than the seller's place of business. It is the category the three day right to cancel attaches to.
- IntestateDying without a valid will, so an estate is divided by the statute instead of by the person's own instructions.
- Judgment proofA description of a person whose income and property all sit inside the exemptions, so a judgment against them reaches nothing. It is a fact about what is collectible, not a status anybody is granted.
- Legal disabilityA legal incapacity that stops a person acting for themselves, such as being a minor or being subject to a guardianship. The age of majority section grants full age to a person of eighteen who is under no legal disability.
- Liquidated damagesA figure fixed in advance by statute or contract rather than proved after the fact. On unpaid wages it is six per cent of the amount unpaid or two hundred dollars, whichever is greater.
- NonconformityIn the new motor vehicle law, the failure of a vehicle to conform to the express warranty. It is what the manufacturer has a duty to repair, and it is what a reasonable number of unsuccessful attempts is counted against.
- 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.
- Personal representativeIn the medical records section, a person authorised to act for the patient, who may make the written request to examine or copy the record alongside the patient and an authorised person.
- RedemptionRecovering property before a sale is finalised by paying what the law requires, which in a foreclosure is the judgment, the costs, poundage and interest.
- 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.
- Rent escrowDepositing rent with the clerk of court instead of with the landlord, where the landlord has not met the obligations the chapter sets, so the money is held until the condition is dealt with.
- Treble damagesThree times the actual economic damages, available in a consumer case where the practice was already declared unlawful before the transaction.
- Unruly childA category a juvenile court adjudicates, defined to include a child who does not submit to the reasonable control of a parent, teacher, guardian or custodian by reason of being wayward or habitually disobedient, a habitual truant, and a child whose behaviour endangers health or morals.