<p>UCDAlum82: Can you clarify what you mean by this? </p>
<p>“I found the insurance company was the best clearing house for outstanding medical bills”</p>
<p>^ I’ll take a stab at this (based on my own experiences). For individuals who were under doctor or hospital care toward the end of their lives, an insurance card is generally required. Any medical services provided are automatically billed to the insurance company. The bills that take a L-O-N-G time to arrive are generally the portions not paid by insurance companies. YMMV.</p>
<p>^^^ I took that to mean that one doctor may not know what other doctors are doing, but everything comes through the insurance company because that’s how people get paid so the insurance company is best for keeping track of those things.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If the account is in your name, and not a joint account with your mother, then it would seem that the liquid part of the estate was already distributed prior to her death. This money would be considered a gift to you (even though that was not its original intent, of course). Assuming that amount is less than the federal exclusion limit, there are no federal estate taxes due. At this point the liquid assets are yours, not the estate’s. Some states have a 1-year lookback period on gifts and will assess those for purposes of state inheritance taxes. This is the case in my MIL’s state.</p>
<p>Is it possible that, other than the POD and accounts with beneficiaries, the estate has no assets at all?</p>
<p>I assume the account in OP’s name is joint or held on behalf of or as executor or trustee. If not, then I don’t understand exactly the deal.</p>
<p>I thought if an account was in mom’s name POD son, it still had to go through probate and doesn’t get disbursed automatically upon mom’s death. That’s the answer I got when I asked the question of a banker when I opened an account. They said if mom wants son to have immediate access to funds when she dies, she should add son to the account and make it mom or son. then he automatically has full access to funds. Mom would obviously only do this in the understanding son will only withdraw funds at the agreed upon time and not before.</p>
<p>The account was a joint account with her. As I understood it when we went to the bank and reported her death the account became mine. That is what they told me at the bank anyway. I have been treating it as an estate account because I know that was the intent, but I was not aware of a legal distinction.</p>
<p>I Googled POD because I didn’t know what that is … Did you know there’s a band called Payable on Death releasing its eighth studio album??? :D</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>OP,
Do you mean the low $100’s, or the low $100,000’s?</p>
<p>$100.000’s</p>
<p>When a relative died, each of her POD accounts were promptly disbursed to each of her beneficiaries. None went thru probate. She had one account in the name of the executor that was and still is being used for estate expenses–executor and attorney, etc. not sure what will end up going thru probate, but know the financial institutions disbursed the POD accounts without any action by executor to the named beneficiaries, upon them completing paperwork and mailing in the death certificate.</p>
<p>An account worth a few $100,000s would be wotrth consulting an attorney about, IMHO.</p>
<p>Good to hear that you are now getting the advice of an attorney!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If the account was joint it does belong to you, regardless of your mom’s intent. I happen to know something about this because the deceased in my estate had a joint account with a tenant in a rental house (long story), and the money reverted to her upon his death. Even if you mom’s intent was for the money to be distributed to her heirs, it isn’t actually part of the estate. So if you distribute it, you are potentially gifting your own money to your other relatives (which has its own implications). Maybe that is one reason they are in a hurry for you to distribute it (they may have figured this out…). Legally, you may be under no obligation to distribute to them at all. If you think you had a can of family worms before… 
I think there is a point here for all of us to realize: when you make an account joint, it makes it easy to have someone pay the bills, etc. with it. But it becomes THEIR money (not part of the estate) if you die. I just opened a joint account with my D2, and I actually told her this as we discussed the account. If one of us dies, this money goes straight to the other person, and is not part of the estate. POD ultimately works the same way – it goes to the person you name in the POD and is not part of the general pool of assets that are split among any heirs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I do my own taxes – and would not undertake acting as a PR for an estate of any size without an attorney. Someone mentioned probate in different states above (the OP probably does not have this problem) – we had attorneys in 3 states and a foreign country at one point because of probate requirements (okay, 3 of the attorneys were for probate requirements and one was my dad’s attorney that we had to tell to please stop doing things my dad asked him to do for the estate because my dad is not a personal rep and does not have the authority to request them – and with no assets in their state we had no need of their services. Sigh…). If there are “real property” assets (eg, mostly real estate) in multiple states, then you likely will have probate in more than one state. </p>
<p>Also, when you move to a different state, in some cases you may need to get your will re-evaluated and re-written. Mine is set up for my house to go to a trust if I die, but only upon my death. The trust can then be liquidated and distributed to the trust beneficiaries without going through probate. But my attorney said that works under my state’s laws, but may not if I move elsewhere (the trust is set up under my state’s laws).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>POD does avoid probate. Generally all that is needed is that a death certificate is provided to the bank, and shortly after that they will release the funds to the POD party. But you can’t avoid your legal obligations through POD (example: you live in a community property state, have the asset in your name, and POD to someone not your spouse – your spouse can still potentially claim some of that account balance unless they signed off on this). There are also other obligations of the estate that also may take precedence over the POD designation. But after those are satisfied, the account assets do go to the POD and are not divided among heirs named in the will. If the assets are distributed by the bank and a claim like those discussed here comes up, the person who wants the money may have to go to court to get it back from the person who got the money.</p>
<p>pod is pod, no probate required.</p>
<p>if you have a joint account, you have survivorship. in my state, that is NOT an estate account.</p>
<p>Something to note for people who are dealing with parents in their twilight years, so to speak, is that putting everything into POD accounts could complicate matters if all monies are dispersed. For example, I have been named in a will. Some monies were dispersed. However, there is real estate ( with taxes and fees) that has been on the market now for a year. If all the cash had been distributed, I do not know what the estate would do to pay those taxes and fees, perhaps ask each of us to chip in when they are due. Estates are complicated.</p>
<p>Again I agree with intparent. From another angle; if there were funds distributed to other family members, PODs already set up by her, I’m not sure you have any obligation to share this joint account with them. Maybe you will, out of fairness, that’s different. But if they already received X or Y, now you’re faced with a task of “what’s fair?” or what brings everyone to some parity? Subtracting what they already got from some grand total?</p>
<p>They don’t own a “portion” of your joint account and that’s how your relative set it up prior to death. Typically, a will would state that bills are to be paid out of this account and any other conditions, such a distributing the balance. </p>
<p>When my grandmother died, there was one POD listing my brother and me and a residual account with my mother as joint. She paid the bills out of that, as you are. My B and I were not entitled to any share of the balance.</p>
<p>*And, if they already spent what they received, you are under no obligation to fund them, based on the convenience of getting money now. Your mother may have wanted to help them, but she cast the die in another direction. Some of this is, as the movie line goes, beyond.your.control.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is an example of those estate obligations that maybe should (legally) come out of the POD assets. Definitely something for an attorney to help you with… I guess the thing for the rest of us to remember is don’t spend all the POD money when it comes to you until the estate is closed. OP, you really should discuss this account with your attorney. If you have paid burial fee, taxes, estate bills out of it, you are actually paying these out of your own pocket (legally). When legally some of that money maybe should have come from elsewhere… I am not saying you want to start (or increase) the kerfuffle with your relatives. But honestly… I would not spend one more dime out of that account without meeting with an attorney. You may choose to keep on doing what you have been doing with the bills, and distribute the account balance across the heirs in the end. But find out what the implications are first.</p>
<p>So this is also a reason to make sure you really understand what your own will, beneficiaries, and POD setup really means. I will also say that your family attorney may or may not do a good job of explaining and helping you understand the implications – an attorney who does estates and trusts for a living may be worth an additional expenditure. I had my family attorney re-do my will afte divorcing a few years ago (all my estate attorneys are in other states). I think I got what I needed because I asked a lot of questions and knew something about the estate process already. But I can see how she might have set something up that I might not have wanted or understood if I haven’t been on top of it. In fact, I have advised my children that if I kick the bucket to hire an estate/trust attorney to help them (not the family attorney who did the will). Just saying… it costs money, but it is easier to set it up right and take the right steps to start with rather than after money has been paid out/spent/etc.</p>
<p>DH and his brother tried for several years to get MIL to sign transfer on death paperwork on her major holding which was a brokerage account. She refused because she didn’t understand what it meant. She really wasn’t capable of understanding it, but they didn’t want to go through the process of declaring her incompetent. Now this account along with several others is going through probate.</p>
<p>In states where probate fees are a significant percentage of the estate, not having assets in TOD/POD accounts or in a trust that bypasses probate can be a very expensive proposition.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Totally agree. DH and I have living trusts set up but need to transfer our house to our joint trust. Going through MIL’s estate process has been the kick in the pants to get us to do this.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>All of one’s assets can be placed into the trust. Once this is done, probate is avoided and the estate practically executes itself, especially if burial arrangements are also made and paid for in advance. There is generally no need for an attorney (especially a $75K attorney!), other than to draft the documents before death, at a cost of about $1,500 or so (depending on the complexity of the estate). So many of the issues raised in the thread can be completely avoided.</p>
<p>One would still need to hold back some funds to pay outstanding creditors and taxes, but if one has been involved in a parent’s finances for some time, this is not a big deal to figure out.</p>
<p>Yea, trusts aren’t helpful until we transfer assets into them. We completed the paperwork to set up trusts but still need to transfer assets into the the trust and retiree accounts, which we have been avoiding.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Disagree. However, I am with commenters who say use the attorney just for consulting on what needs to be done and doing most of that legwork yourself/trusted relatives or friends to save on atty costs.</p>
<p>Also, none of the executors I’ve assisted on their matters as a friend ever payed anywhere near $75k for an attorney. Their matters weren’t THAT complicated or involved a ginormous sum of assets. Most were in the range of a few hundred grand to half a grand before debts/expenses/taxes.</p>
<p>Most paid between a few hundred to a thousand and change for the entire process. Granted, some of that is because all of the cases I experienced took place in more rural/suburban small town areas of the NE/Mid-Atlantic so the local attorney fees tended to be much less than what one would find in NYC or Boston.</p>