Fixing up estate property in a Minnesota Probate
Probate might not be the proper time to fix up a home. You might be expected to do a handful of obligatory repairs and some small amounts of cleaning, but you hopefully won’t be doing too many major changes during this probate law case. What you should be focusing on is getting everything and everybody ready for anything to be appraised and potentially sold.
It could turn out that the entire house needs to be sold off. It may also be that the deceased’s descendants might have to figure out what’s to be done about the assets they can’t physically split. Mansions don’t usually cut evenly into eight slices. Though, this situation could entail getting the probate assets to somewhere safe. That’s not always the case, but your central goal is to keep the majority of assets out of harm’s path.
No Touchy
The safest option for any given property that’s in the middle of or needs to go through a Minnesota probate might be to not touch it whatsoever. If you seriously think that something should be done, it’s best to talk with at least the executor who’s working the case.
Finding something in an incorrect state may raise eyebrows to say the least. Taking any part of the property or moving it may make you appear to be a threat or a progenitor of unwanted problems.
As a general rule, only serious situations may enable for something to be modified or touched up. Try to keep as many possessions intact as you can. Maintain general upkeep on the home to prevent anything from falling into disrepair. Think of every asset a part of the whole estate, and when one part suffers, the whole may suffer in kind.
Rational things like getting a new insurance policy on the home and stopping a flood should be acceptable if it keeps you from losing the home. Be cautious by always talking things through in advance if possible. Moreover, as things are starting to become more finalized, questions may start arising as what can be kept and what needs to go.
Consider a Storage Unit
Though you may know this already, the main goal you should have is to keep almost everything intact. You don’t want to discard anything before you get legitimate permission to throw it away. Anything that wasn’t transferred outside of probate might be up for the creditors’ taking, and by having more items to sell off and pay the debt, you may help prevent more important possessions from being lost. Renting out a storage unit, for instance, might be in your best interest, and you’ll want to let everyone know where the property is going to so they don’t think a thief got to the property before they did.
To expand on that, your only two options for protecting the assets may fall to keeping them in the original home or a storage unit. While you probably won’t be required to keep everything in the house, it’s more so that you are expected to leave the assets in a safe place. That may sound to you like your own abode or resting place, but in reality, you should probably keep things in a semi-public area. For conversation, said public area shouldn’t mean that you’re keeping things held in an open park, but it should mean it’s held in a place which you and the rest of your probate team can access.
Everything Might be Involved
Never be too confidant that anything will be inherited or that anything can escape the probate process. It’s possible that the deceased didn’t leave a single means of escape for their property and each asset must be dealt with, and that’s making the assumption that they’ve procured a usable will. So, if almost everything in the home and the home itself must be kept intact for new owners, there’s what you need to be mindful of. As with almost everything that goes through probate, it may also need to be sold to pay off debt.
Now, it may sound appealing to you to try and make the abode as ugly as can be so you can prevent the sale, but that isn’t the way these things work. The people overseeing the deceased’s debt are probably trying to get paid no matter how little that amount may be. They’ve probably dealt with cases where not everything can be paid back to them, but such cases may have all of the property sacrificed to debt in some shape or form. Anyone who’s owed money by the deceased might be considered more of a rightful heir than any of the closest blood relations.
Appraising Things
The house probably doesn’t have a barcode or a price tag on it that can tell you its market value, which may result in an appraiser being summoned. Finding out how much the estate is worth if sold is one thing, but there might also be the concern as to what kind of taxes may be incurred by having a larger estate. This concern will probably come up at some point, and it will probably be in conjunction with taking inventory. You need to know the numbers eventually.
No, you’re normally not technically required to sell anything during the probate process, but that’s if everything is in order to account for the deceased’s outstanding debts. Getting everything appraised is still potentially a necessity when more than one party was supposed to inherit an asset that can’t be split.
Not every asset is a pizza. Should you be able to find a way that you can peacefully live with your siblings in one home and keep everyone happy, you may never need to know how much the roof over your head is worth. The inverse situation is what you’re preparing for, and though it may not mean selling the house completely, that may lead to one side purchasing the other party’s portion.
Minnesota Probate Lawyers
Finding out about whether or not something can be done during probate might not be your forte, and it’s not a topic that you are required to know. If you get a Minnesota probate lawyer from Flanders Law Firm LLC, you can get someone who can tell you what you should be able to do. They’ll probably know what to tell you in general situations, and they should be ready to evaluate more complex matters that lack black and white answers.
Please contact the law office today at 612-424-0398.
As a small side note, don’t neglect any emergency repairs that need to be done, and once those are silenced, calling should be the next step that you take.