Why Withholding Information Makes Probate Worse

I think a lot of people are maybe like, "If I don't have any information, it's just better not to share." It's actually worse. You need to just say you don't know and what you're running into.

Because a lot of my clients, they have all their paperwork, everything's in order, but the larger banks and financial institutions and mortgage companies, they make it so tedious and difficult to update their files and basically give the client the authority to talk to them, because they're stepping into somebody's shoes passed away, that they get stonewalled. And I have to get on the phone and be my nice, super pleasant, not self and basically tell them, like, "We're not doing this. Get it together." And so that can cause delays.

The second thing is, after we have our 120-day creditor period, no money goes out during this time, because this is a time for us to see what liabilities are against the estate. What are the debts?

A lot of people will come to me and say, "Mom and dad didn't have debt. They paid cash for everything. Everything's been paid off for years." And then we do the creditor period and, lo and behold, we've got a consumer credit card.