If you are Petitioning to open Probate of a Regular Estate, you will be required to submit Schedule A, which is an estimate of the assets of the Probate Estate. If you are Petitioning to Probate a Small Estate, you will be required to submit Schedule B, which must state precisely all assets of the Probate Estate and exactly what their value was on date of death. Verifications and/or proof of the assets and valuations will be required along with your Schedule B. This can present challenges for the Petitioner inasmuch as they have not yet been appointed Personal Representative and may not yet have access to the information. Your Estates & Trusts attorney can provide additional guidance on this.
If you are Petitioning to open Probate for a Regular Estate, you must also post a Surety Bond. If the decedent had a Will, the Will likely excuses Bond. In Maryland, this does not mean that you do not need any Bond, it means that you must only post what is known as a Nominal Bond. Your attorney, or the Court, can assist with obtaining this Bond. If your loved one did not have a Will, you may be excused from posting Bond – again, meaning you must only post a Nominal Bond – if all heirs sign Consents. The Consents should be filed with the Petition. If all heirs will not Consent, then the Petitioner must post a Personal Representative Bond. A Personal Representative Bond is expensive and involves insurance underwriting that includes a background and credit check because it is generally Ordered by a Judge that it insure the entirety of the Probate assets of the Estate. For example, a Personal Representative Bond for an Estate with $250,000 of probate assets will likely cost ten times that of a Nominal Bond in the amount of say $25,000. The cost of the Bond is an administrative expense of the Estate.
If your loved one died without a Will, or if there is a Will and none of the individuals nominated to be Personal Representative are willing or able to do so, or have predeceased, then the Petitioner might seek to have all heirs sign a Consent to Appointment of Personal Representative. This Consent also allows for the heirs to excuse Bond as well.
Every Petition for Probate must include a List of Interested Persons. An Interested Person is anyone who might be an heir to the estate if the decedent died without a Will and anyone who is a Legatee under the Will. As stated earlier, who the heirs are depends on the complex Maryland Rules of Intestacy. At this point it is important to define two terms commonly used to mean the same thing but actually meaning something quite different – Heir vs. Legatee.
For the purposes of the List of Interested Persons, an Heir is defined as anyone who might inherit from an estate under the Maryland Rules of Intestacy, regardless whether the decedent had a Will. Conversely, a Legatee is anyone who is named to inherit in the Will. Sometimes the Heirs and Legatees will be roughly the same individuals. However, based on the decedent’s intentions in their Will, the Legatees may be different individuals than those names as Heirs. It is important to note that a named Heir may not also be a Legatee under the Will and thus may not inherit. All individuals named on the List of Interested Persons will receive a notice in the mail alerting them that an Estate has been opened. As you can imagine, this may cause numerous inquiries to the Petitioner regarding whether they actually inherit from the Estate.
As Petitioner, one must also submit a Notice of Appointment, Notice to Creditors and Notice to Unknown Heirs. This Notice is required, by Maryland statute, to be published in a newspaper approved by the Court in the legal notices section. This is a legal notice and is not the same as an obituary. Each county has differing approved newspapers. If you are probating a Small Estate, you will be required to publish this Notice twice. If you are probating a Regular Estate, you will be required to publish this Notice three times. The cost of publishing Notice is an administrative expense of the estate. Publication of this Notice may trigger a number of things. An unknown heir may may come forward on their own or through a company that searches for unknown heirs and charges a fee to the heir for their services. Someone may come forward with a Will, or a more recent Will. Of course, creditors may also come forward (more on creditors later). In Maryland, real estate professionals may begin contacting the Personal Representative to see if the Estate has real property to sell and financial advisors may also seek to introduce themselves in the hope that heirs will require advice on their inheritances.
Non-Maryland residents are permitted to Probate Maryland Estates, so long as they are U.S. Citizens or possess a Green Card. However, if the Petitioner is a resident of another state, they must submit an Appointment and Acceptance of Resident Agent along with the other required documents and information with their Petition for Probate. A Resident Agent is someone who is a Maryland resident and who agrees to accept legal service on behalf of the Estate. Often, your Estates & Trusts attorney is the best choice to stand as your Resident Agent.