when an estate has to be administered

through the probate division in court

generally speaking you have to first

identify all of the assets that are

considered probate assets once you have

that figured out you have to collect

those assets and preserve them

so if we’re talking about something like

a house we need to be sure that the

house is protected maybe it needs to be

sold if we’re talking about investment

accounts or bank accounts we need to

consolidate funds so that we can pay

creditors and move forward in the

probate process

so once you’ve figured out what the

assets are you have to figure out who

the creditors are you have to pay those

bills wrap up those open-ended issues

like tax returns things like that and

then you’re going to be Distributing the

balance

to the beneficiaries of the estate so

the whole process can take anywhere from

six months to several years depending on

the number of beneficiaries depending on

the number of assets how complicated the

situation is and whether there are any

objections along the way