A Legal MinuteWill contests & capacity
What Formal Probate Really Means
The short answer
Formal probate does not necessarily mean the court watches everything the personal representative does. The probate court's administration checks the file at checkpoints set in the statute, such as whether an inventory or accounting was filed by its due date. Closer oversight of the personal representative is a feature of supervised administration.
From the full episode Contesting Wills in Arizona: Key Insights and Challenges (19:15).
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Transcript
People assume that formal probate means that the court is watching every single thing a person's doing from when they get appointed all the way to the end. And that's not necessarily true.
There are checkpoints in the statute, which I've talked about, with an inventory, accounting, that the probate court administration will audit the file and say, "Okay, the inventory was due on this day. It looks like we have that filed in. We're good." So, it's more checking that. It's not necessarily oversight for the actual appointed personal representative. That would be a supervised administration.
And so, whenever you contest a will, it just becomes expensive, because now we're litigation and we're fighting about it.
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