<p>Mid-August I had a relative die and I am the executor for her estate. </p>
<p>I am working through her accounts and one of the issues that has come up is what to do about her phone number, which has been in the family for 60 years. Verizon wants to cancel the account in 3 days unless someone takes over the billing on the account. I am not anxious to take on a phone bill for a phone that rings in an empty house that is going to be sold. </p>
<p>I would like to keep the phone number around for a year or so to make sure we catch any calls from the relatives friends/over seas relatives we dont know to notify. And it is possible that a local relative would want it. However I dont want to pay Vz $30 a month for the privilege. </p>
<p>I am in a different State/area code from where the landline is. Vz is not my local carrier. </p>
<p>Any suggestions as to how to port the number? I have a Vonage service but it didnt look like I could add it as a virtual number. Google Voice doesnt port landlines. Verizon has Home Phone Connect that is $9 a month but it is still ringing in an empty house. </p>
<p>Any other suggestions on how to handle the line? Ideally I’d like to just leave a greeting and get voice mail on line.</p>
<p>Cancel the phone number.
You can call the new person with the recycled phone number, explain the circumstances and leave your phone number so they can pass it along to relatives looking for the deceased.</p>
<p>The estate can retain the phone number for a bit longer. If there is no answering machine at the house, have whoever is local pick up a cheap one and install it so that someone can collect the messages remotely for as long as you need to have the phone functional. Yes, this would be a legitimate expense for the estate, and would give everyone a bit longer to sort out what to do.</p>
<p>You might look into whether you can port the number to a cheap pay-as-you-go phone. We had a cell phone with this issue in the estate I was involved in. Estate paid the cell phone bill for a while (one of us carried it). We paid the estate back for any personal use of the phone until we turned it off.</p>
<p>The problem with the estate paying the phone is that I dont have the estate account set up yet- that requires a tax id to be established and letters testamentary. So it will be t least 10 more days. </p>
<p>Vz says once they are notified of a death they cant auto-bill a deceased’s account. </p>
<p>A pay-go cell phone might be a solution, although I dread talking to Indian for an hour to get this set up. </p>
<p>I’d like some kind VOIP solution- anyone with MagicJack experience?</p>
<p>We ported my MILs number (again, family number for 50+years) to my neices cell phone. Perhaps if someone in the family is getting ready for a cell phone or doesn’t like their current number they might be a willing participant. </p>
<p>Having an out of state phone number for your cell phone is no big deal these days. </p>
<p>We have our second line with an Ooma that we selected a number thats local for my mom so she can call us toll-free. (At 85, she refuses to carry a cell phone - we have offered multiple times to put her on our family plan).</p>
<p>Just drop the phone plan to the lowest cost possible, but you need call forwarding enabled.
Then get a google voice account (sounds like you have one already). but you can get one with a local to the home phone so you don’t pay long distance.</p>
<p>FORWARD the home number to the google voice account. It will take messages and send you emails when there is a call. </p>
<p>We did that with my Mom’s phone and it has worked really well. Gave me breathing room for a bit. </p>
<p>Eventually we ported the number from ATT to the local carrier. By the time I added the forwarding service, it isn’t THAT much cheaper, but it is somewhat and every penny was counting.</p>
<p>The forwarding system works very well. but you don’t get a ring IN the house. You can still dial out though so if you are there cleaning, that works out fine.</p>
<p>Can you buy a low cost prepaid cell phone, activate it, and port the existing number to it? Perhaps the local relative can activate the phone and ask for the existing number to be ported to it, in case the cell phone company won’t do it for you as a non-local person. Then, since it is a cell phone, it can be given to whoever will be handling the calls and messages.</p>
<p>Just because the estate bank account isn’t set up yet doesn’t mean the estate can’t accumulate bills. Pay the bill yourself. Keep clear records of that, and then reimburse yourself laterfrom the estate account.</p>
<p>I’m sure you already considered this but - why not just cancel it altogether? Chances are very good that anyone actually close to the deceased person already knows about their passing since news like that spreads like wildfire and you or someone else could, if needed anymore, help with the spread of the word by making sure certain key people in the different areas are notified of the passing and then they can pass it on to whoever else needs to know. </p>
<p>People who call the number can also always write if they happen to get the recording that the line has been disconnected - either write or call a relative/friend to see what might have happened.</p>
<p>You can easily have the mail changed to your address.</p>
<p>Note - when I went through something similar I had the phone canceled but that phone company (not Verizon), if I recall correctly, offered to have the number auto-forward to my home number for some period of time, maybe a month or so, and it was no extra charge.</p>
<p>I think the numbers historically weren’t recycled for a year or so but that practice may have changed more recently where they’re recycling it more quickly.</p>
<p>OP - Just a month to get the Estate account set up? Count yourself lucky. When my Mom passed it took more than FOUR months just to name Executors! We paid bills out of our personal accounts and were reimbursed from the Estate Account. (We also did this for the final months of the Estate. Probate Court froze the Estate Account then took nine months to issue the Estate Closure paperwork!)</p>
<p>We put an answering machine on my Mom’s phone line in order to “capture” calls from persons who hadn’t heard … and also to leave the impression that the house was still occupied. $30/month for six months isn’t a huge burden for an Estate IMO.</p>
<p>Odd man out here. Relative died a year ago. Phone number had been the house phone for 55 years. Day after the funeral, her husband had the number disconnected. It really wasn’t a big deal…except none of us has the cell phone number memorized!</p>
<p>Unless there is a real reason for keeping this…I vote for disconnecting it.</p>
<p>Having said that…if you pay a cost relative to the estate and keep the receipt, the estate should be able to repay you once this account is set up.</p>
<p>My husband was just executor for his mother’s estate and there were several things which we personally footed and then deducted from the estate when the accounts were settled. This is not unusual, foot the bill for now and then charge the estate later on.</p>
<p>So the Vz VOIP home solution is 9.99 is you sign a two year commitment. Month to month it is about a regular phone like. </p>
<p>The path that seemed simplest to me was to activate a second Vonage line and port the number to the line. Note: the Vonage virtual number cant be a ported one so that wont work. The extra line is $11 month to month ($7 plus a bunch of garbage fees). I will just send the line to voice mail, which I can collect on my email and answer. </p>
<p>The line turn up was instantaneous. The porting I am waiting for Vz on, and I wouldnt be surprised if there was an issue. Maybe I should have had it in my name and then ported it. Oh well.</p>
<p>I guess I would have ported to a cheap prepaid account–$100 for a 1000 minutes that can be used over the course of a year and phone for about $20 at walmart. No contract or cancellation fees.</p>
<p>Contact the phone company and explain to them you want to transfer the phone number. They should have a form the authorized estate representative can sign authorizing the phone number reassignment.</p>
<p>Also dealing with this issue, but slightly different. My parents sold their home and need to be out by the end of the month. The place they are going to won’t be ready until spring at the earliest, maybe summer. So they have to go someplace else temporarily. They don’t want to lose the old phone number but can’t transfer it to their new home yet. Can’t transfer it to the temporary place as it will most likely be out of state.</p>
<p>port it to italkbb and voip provider that is same as Vonage. The lowest plan is 4.95/mo and they give you a router which you can plug it into any internet service anywhere in the world. The service is not too good, but good enough for casual conversation, at least it is lower than any cell phone or vonage plan.</p>