Case Studies
Problem:
Our Client, an attorney, had agreed to be the executor of an estate. Upon the testator's death, the client was unprepared for the vast amount of clutter and disorganization he encountered in the decedent's home. Massive amounts of "hoarding" had occurred when the home was held in the family for multiple generations. The attorney simply could not commit the time away from his practice to sort, discard, and organize a lifetime of possessions accumulated by the decedent.
What We Did:
- We worked with the attorney to identify bequeathed items and other assets that needed to returned to their rightful owner.
- All paperwork was sorted into the following categories
for the paralegal to review:
- Business cards
- Loose notes
- Address books
- Cards & correspondence
- Banking, Brokerage
- Insurance
- Taxes
- Other vital documents
- Valuable collections were segregated.
- All household items were sorted, packed, and indexed from a residence that consisted of three bathrooms, six bedrooms, one kitchen, one dining room, one living room, one study, and one full basement.
- At least 150 garbage bags of debris were removed from the home.
- A spreadsheet of the remaining household contents was created which detailed the item's description, number of boxes, and location. This spreadsheet was the basis for a consultation with the client in determining what items should be appraised, donated, or auctioned.
Result:
The organized possessions enabled the attorney to invite the appropriate professionals to appraise the home, auction assets, and value the collections. The attorney fulfilled his fiduciary responsibility to locate, identify, inventory, and distribute estate assets without placing an economic strain on his legal practice.
