Real estate owned by a deceased person

Title issues

When transferring a property, it is essential to ensure that the taxes on the property are current, as any outstanding taxes could cause issues with recording the deed. It is not uncommon to come across deceased owners, making it challenging to determine who has the authority to sign on behalf of the estate. To move through the transaction, the title company must open a probate estate to have a court-appointed representative sign the necessary documents. Although the probate process can seem daunting, it is relatively simple for smaller estates, and it is a necessary step to transfer the property formally out of the estate. It is crucial to remember that even if a will seems clear, going through probate is still necessary to avoid any surprises.

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Video Transcript

Dead people on title.

Right…see it all the time.

Right, you research the records and you find out that the property’s owned by someone who's died.

Yep, that person surprisingly isn't going to be able to sign any of the documents that we're talking about. So now the question is where did the property go when the person died, and some people don't have Wills as the title company as people in the real estate industry. We can't determine who's Will is correct, if it’s the latest will, even if the will says that John gets the property crystal clear. Even if it's crystal clear we can't tell, so one of the things that we're looking for is who has the authority to sign on behalf of this person's estate because we're presuming that the property is in the person's estate and that's where we've got to go to court.

Yeah. So we have to open up a probate estate, have the judge or a court actually appoint somebody to sign on behalf of the now deceased and with those letters of authority. They're called, then we can move through the transaction. The deeds would go actually into the estate and it would be distributed out through the probate proceedings and it's not as hard as what people think right if it's a simple estate. A lot of times you just go to the court. They'll walk you through a lot of the paperwork. Someone gets appointed as the personal representative of the estate and then they can sign the documents. Sometimes you don't even need an attorney. It really it depends on the size of the person's estate. Yeah, because the challenge is we have people that will come in and say “It is crystal clear. I'm the only heir…look at this. How can there be a problem?” And under state law you have to go through the mechanism of probate to formally transfer that property out of the estate to whoever it's going to and it becomes a surprise to some people because they may have already closed Mom's account and sold mom's car. They never probated the estate and all of a sudden now they've sold the house and now we've got to probate the estate.