When a parent dies in Brooklyn, the children often assume they can walk into the local bank branch with a death certificate to cover the immediate funeral costs. Instead, the teller freezes the account. The family is abruptly locked out of the funds, the funeral home is waiting for a deposit, and the next nine months suddenly belong to Surrogate’s Court. The immediate aftermath of a death requires deliberate action, but grieving families frequently struggle to separate the legally urgent from the merely important.
As an attorney handling estate administration, I watch families make well-intentioned missteps in those first few weeks. They pay the deceased’s credit card bills out of their own pockets, assuming they will be reimbursed. They distribute personal property to siblings before the court has authorized anyone to act. They tear apart apartments looking for a Will, only to find a photocopy—which carries entirely different legal weight than the original.
Stewardship.
That is the core concept you must embrace when a family member passes away. You are stepping into the role of a custodian for their legacy. To protect that legacy and avoid personal liability, a specific sequence of events must take place.
Securing the Physical and Digital Estate
Before any legal filings happen, the physical footprint of the deceased must be secured. If the person lived alone, this means changing the locks, securing valuable personal property, and arranging for mail forwarding. If the property is left vacant, you must notify the homeowner’s insurance carrier—many policies have vacancy clauses that will lapse if the home is unoccupied for more than thirty days.
You also need to order death certificates. I always advise families to request at least ten original copies from the funeral director. You will need them for the probate petition, life insurance claims, banking institutions, and the transfer of real estate. In New York, you can request death certificates with or without the confidential cause of death listed. Generally, financial institutions only need the short-form certificate without the medical details, but life insurance companies will demand the long-form version to rule out excluded causes of death.
Do not attempt to access the deceased’s digital banking or social media accounts by guessing their passwords, even if you are the nominated executor. Accessing these accounts without formal legal authority violates terms of service agreements and complicates the estate administration process later. Instead, notify the relevant institutions of the death so the accounts can be formally frozen.
The Search for Governing Documents
The next phase is locating the legal architecture the deceased left behind. You are looking for the original Last Will and Testament, any trust agreements, and a clear picture of the financial assets.
Finding the original Will is critical. If you only find a photocopy, New York law presumes the testator destroyed the original document with the intention of revoking it. Overcoming this presumption in court is an expensive, uphill battle. If the original Will is locked in a safe deposit box, you cannot simply demand access. Under SCPA § 2003, you must file a specific petition with Surrogate’s Court to have the box drilled and inventoried in the presence of a bank officer, who will then mail the Will directly to the court.
During this search, gather the following discrete items:
- The original Last Will and Testament and any codicils
- Original trust agreements (revocable or irrevocable)
- Deeds to real property and cooperative stock certificates
- Recent statements for all bank and brokerage accounts
- Life insurance policies and annuity contracts
- Documentation of any pre-paid funeral arrangements
You must also identify which assets are actually subject to probate. A Will only controls assets held in the deceased’s sole name. If a bank account has a designated “Transfer on Death” beneficiary, or if a house is owned jointly with rights of survivorship, those assets pass outside of the Will by operation of law. We spend a significant amount of time during the initial weeks helping families untangle the probate estate from the non-probate estate.
Crossing the Threshold of Surrogate’s Court
A Will does not execute itself. Holding a document that names you as executor gives you absolutely no legal authority until a judge says it does.
Under the Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act (SCPA) Article 14, a Will must be formally admitted to probate. We must file the original Will, a certified death certificate, and a detailed probate petition with the court in the county where the deceased resided. We also have to notify the distributees—the individuals who would inherit under EPTL § 4-1.1 if there were no Will—even if they are completely disinherited in the document itself. They have the legal right to object to the Will’s validity.
Only after the court reviews the petition, clears any objections, and issues a decree will you receive Letters Testamentary. These “Letters” are the actual legal documents granting you the power to act as the executor. With Letters Testamentary in hand, you can finally open an estate bank account, liquidate the deceased’s individual accounts, and begin consolidating the assets.
Fiduciary Duty and the Distribution of Assets
Once appointed, your role shifts to that of a fiduciary. A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care in the law. It means you must manage the estate’s assets prudently and put the interests of the beneficiaries and creditors ahead of your own.
One of the most common errors an executor makes is distributing money to the beneficiaries too early. If you hand out the estate funds and later discover the deceased owed a massive tax debt to the IRS or had an outstanding Medicaid lien, you—the executor—can be held personally liable for that shortfall.
The law requires you to marshal the assets, pay the legally enforceable debts, file the final personal income tax returns, and handle any estate taxes before a single penny goes to the heirs. Only after a careful accounting of all incoming assets and outgoing expenses is complete do we draft receipt and release agreements for the beneficiaries to sign. This protects the executor from future litigation.
Handling an estate is a generational transition, not merely a series of administrative tasks. It requires patience, exactness, and a clear understanding of your obligations under the law. If you have recently lost a family member and need to understand your legal responsibilities, schedule an estate administration review with our office to map out the required filings for the next ninety days.
