Inbox Question | How the Small Estate Affidavit Process Works
Big Picture Retirement®
Devin Carroll
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we answer a question from Peter about what happens when a parent dies with a fully planned estate that avoids probate — and how the Small Estate Affidavit process works in practice. We discuss handling unexpected estate assets like refund checks, whether you can open an estate bank account without letters testamentary, and who's responsible for final taxes and bills
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show. |
| 0:07.6 | Today, we're going to the inbox to answer questions sent in by you, our listeners. |
| 0:12.3 | Now, if you'd like to send us a question, just head over to big pictureretirement.com and click the Ask a Question tab in the top menu. |
| 0:18.9 | Oh, and just a quick reminder. |
| 0:19.9 | On this podcast, we provide |
| 0:22.0 | general information and not specific tax, legal, or financial advice. But if you're ever ready |
| 0:28.3 | to move from the broad education we provide here to personalized advice that's specific to you, |
| 0:34.7 | you can find links to our websites down in the description. |
| 0:38.4 | Now let's jump in to today's question. |
| 0:45.7 | John, today's question comes from Peter. |
| 0:48.0 | Peter says, let's say my mother dies and has successfully planned to avoid probate. |
| 0:52.5 | We're getting a lot of questions about estate planning and avoiding |
| 0:54.7 | probate with this. Yeah, we are. Three parts to the perfect estate plan series. You know, that was, |
| 1:00.0 | that was the last episode was on that very topic. So that makes sense. Yep. The last episode from when |
| 1:06.1 | this question came in at least. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So he goes on to say all retirement, |
| 1:32.9 | taxable and bank accounts pass to beneficiaries. Any car or house even has TOD title. Our state has a small estate affidavit process. All right, hang on. Let me get, you know what? Ah, that's much better. I tried to enlarge the text, and it just wasn't enough. Well, I don't have my glasses, so I've got the, I've got like a child's reading book in front of me with the size of the text. |
| 1:41.7 | Okay, he says, our state has a small estate affidavit process to avoid probate below a certain asset level, $50,000. |
| 1:47.9 | Can you explain more about how this process works in practice? And then he goes on to offer some additional details in there. But let's talk about that real quick, the small estate |
| 1:53.6 | affidavit process. Yeah. So, you know, and I think you'll find this in almost every state. |
| 2:00.4 | I don't have a state by state, you know, reference or something, but I would think that it's probably |
| 2:05.1 | in just, it's in every state that I've ever practiced in. |
| 2:07.4 | The idea is that the legislators, they recognize that there may not be a need to go through |
... |
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