E231 Emotional Distress During Probate (Case Study)

<p>Death, family, and money are always an emotional mix. And those emotions can lead to headaches and expensive problems during probate.</p> <h2>How to clean out house after death</h2> <p><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-10725" src= "https://anthonyspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/How-to-clean-out-house-after-death-300x169.jpg" alt="How to clean out house after death" width="300" height= "169" /></p> <p>In general, the clean-out can be an emotional and cathartic process as people journey down memory lane. But in our case, the daughters are from out of state. They had limited time to just tag items for the executor to keep or trash, then leave.</p> <p>Then, we <a href= "https://anthonyspark.com/e123-how-to-choose-your-realtor/">hired a realtor</a> who was willing to box and move the items to storage on behalf of the daughters. Unfortunately, making decisions in an emotional state caused very confusing, very long lists. As a result, the realtor accidentally took golf clubs to be appraised, rather than leaving them in the “keep” pile. The realtor thought these nice golf clubs were in the “trash” pile, so he decided to see what they were worth instead of throwing them away. He did this so the heirs wouldn’t lose money by throwing away something potentially valuable. He had good intentions with his actions.</p> <p>Little did the realtor know, the golf clubs had strong sentimental value. The daughters went ballistic when they found out that the realtor handled the golf clubs. The daughters threatened to sue the realtor and call the police on him.</p> <h2>How this created probate issues</h2> <p><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-10726" src= "https://anthonyspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/How-this-created-probate-issues-300x169.jpg" alt="How this created probate issues" width="300" height= "169" /></p> <p>The incident resulted in weeks of emails and phone calls between lawyers, daughters, and realtor to sort out and calm down the situation. Of course, this was all billable work.</p> <p>The