Basic Approaches to Estate Settlement

Local Probate Lawyer

Historically, the most common approach to probating an estate has been to directly retain a local probate lawyer, who then manages all estate interactions with the court (and often helps with additional duties as well).

That said, hiring a probate lawyer to handle estate settlement is somewhat akin to hiring an account to handle your income taxes — they're both very helpful, but you still end up with a lot of work yourself. In our income tax analogy, you end up having to gather all sorts of documentation concerning your various sources of income and deductions, often organizing and transcribing this information into your accountant's preferred format. When dealing with estate settlement, you have to deal with similar data collection and organization... and more, much more (e.g., holding an estate sale, cleaning out the house, notifying friends, filing income taxes, tracking maintenance expenses, etc.).

Probate lawyers typically charge thousands of dollars, and sometimes a percentage of the estate itself. While an inexpensive probate might cost less than $10,000, it also wouldn't be uncommon for a probate lawyer to charge $20,000... or more if the estate is large or complex. Regardless, lawyers are expensive, and typically charge hundreds of dollars per hour, so while their time is valuable and helpful, you don't want to be frivolous with your requests, or ask them innumerable questions.

Sources for probate lawyers include:

• Avvo.com — Listings for lawyers, legal advice, etc.
• Lawyers.com — For executor help, search for "probate" lawyers
• FindLaw — Find probate lawyers (and a top online legal resource)

Franchised Lawyer Service

In recent years, a few legal services have sprung up that retain probate lawyers on staff, or outsource to local lawyers behind-the-scenes. With these services, you sign up online, and while it appears that you are going to be able to do everything using simple interactive forms, in the end you end up dealing with "house" lawyers and paralegals... who may be less expensive than private practice lawyers, but still charge thousands of dollars.

While individual experiences can range dramatically, in general you will find that a directly retained probate lawyer gives the best individualized service, while a franchised service lawyer costs somewhat less.

Sources for franchised, lawyer-driven estate settlement include:

• ClearEstate — Pricing depends on the jurisdiction, but typically <$10,000
• Alix — Charges 1% of the estate with a $9,000 minimum

Estate Settlement Software

You can also just do it yourself, aided by modern estate settlement software. This approach is by far the most affordable, usually costing just a couple hundred dollars, but it's also a bit more work.

If you're someone who files his or her own taxes using something like TurboTax, this option may be for you. That said, interacting with the court can be tedious, and a couple of states actually require you to use a lawyer for the direct court interactions.

Regardless of the few situations in which a lawyer is actually required, many people hire a lawyer just to simplify specific court interactions, and then supplement their lawyer using estate settlement software — both in terms of doing some of the work themselves, and in terms of better understanding what is going on and choosing specific options without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars pestering their expensive lawyer with questions.

Perhaps a good analogy would be that of using Quicken® to manage your household budget: Quicken can provide a nice structure, track your inflows and outflows, and generate reports, but ultimately it's up to you to make sure that your budget is right for you and that you follow it (let alone ensuring that you are complying with all relevant financial regulations and obligations, such as homeowner's dues, pet licenses, etc.).

Sources for estate settlement software include:

• EstateExec — The leader in the field, priced at a flat fee of $199 per estate
• Executor.org — Limited functionality, no accounting, no legal knowledge base, $96 per year (i.e., $192 for the typical estate)
• Lackner Group — No settlement guidance, can handle complex accounting and big estate 706 tax forms, module-based pricing

Solo Do-It-Yourself

Of course, you could also just try to do it completely on your own, researching the legal system online, reading books at the library, creating your own spreadsheets, etc.

It's actually not uncommon for inexperienced executors to think that they can just do it themselves – and they can – but over time they typically realize they need to keep researching more issues, keep expanding the functionality of their spreadsheets, and often don't know what they don't know, missing entire action areas.

When you consider the hundreds of hours you would likely spend researching various settlement practices and requirements, not to mention building your own spreadsheets (which will almost certainly not understand how to calculate executor fees, determine and track cost basis based on asset class, or automatically download estate transactions from the bank, etc.), you will realize that the cost of your time (and the increased chance for error) is much greater than any potential savings.

The bottom line is that you could try to do this all without any help... but why would you? When compared to spending a couple of hundred dollars for a dedicated software tool, it doesn't seem like much of a bargain, especially since the estate, not the executor, is responsible for paying these kinds of administration costs.