AboutDavid Hollingsworth Expertise I have quite a bit of experience in the field of Probate in Central Indiana along with general areas of civil law. I do not answer question regarding crimminal law or misdemeanors.
Expert: David Hollingsworth Date: 3/1/2008 Subject: small estate/ accounting
Question My brother and I are essentially wrapping up my Dad's (small estate). He passed away in July 2007 and had about 15,000 after selling vehicle and personal items, attorney told us take the money and walk away- and I am record keeping because I am a bit paranoid. The estate value after funeral & expenses is now $10,000 (12K came from a vehicle). We haven't paid any bills & are borderline on having a bankrupt estate, but we are finding that the administrative fees for ourselves will work in our favor (we never went into probate, but I am doing the accounting to be safe). What should we charge ourselves for administrative fees/ hourly? After we add it up (on an hourly basis) technically we may not need to pay out anything on the bills & creditors that are now starting to come. We considered $20 and hour based on an average of our actual income.
Answer The Indiana Inhertiance tax division of the Indiana Department of Revenue presented a seminar a short time ago and addressed the issue of personal representative fees. The bottom line is that it makes not much difference what the rate per hour is so long as the total amount charged does not exceed 1/2 of what the attorney charged in the estate. Your question is a bit confusing. Did you or did you not open an estate. If you did not then you will have no attorney fees and you have a bit of a predicament. If you slam the door in the creditors face by takng what is there as a fee then you are just asking for trouble. The creditors have the right to demand the estate be opened. I would assume the advice you have gotten is from someone who knows that the creditors will probably not demand the estate to be opened. Your accounting is likewise questionable. If you had 15M in gross and now have 10M then what happened to the 5M. If you paid the funeral expenses and they were only 5M then where is the source of the other bills you are facing. If they are charge cards then there is a pretty good chance they will not pursue you as heirs to collect from a practical standpoint. You are far from a bankrupt estate. A bankrupt estate is one that owes more than it has. You could try to compromise the outstanding debts and then instead of taking the remaining money as income for your services I would take it as an inheritance. This likewise assumes there are no other heirs or sibling and no will. Remember, if taken as compensation then technically it is taxable as income for state and federal purposes but since it is so small an amount there is no federal estate tax nor is there any Indiana Inheritance tax. I think that perhaps you are asking questions to have some justification for just taking the 10M under the guise of getting approval from me as an attorney. You need to talk to the attorney you have seen in the past for his input since there are so many gaps in your questions.
