The lawyer’s answer? It depends.

On average, the person who is coming to my office, who is in a terrible state of shock and grieving their loved one, doesn’t realize that the average probate is estimated in Alaska to run around 400 days. They just aren’t thinking on that big of a scale, and understandably so - there is the grief of losing someone that you loved, there is the funeral, the relatives coming from out of state, the immediate bills - it can all be extremely overwhelming.

What contributes to this average is the delays. It may take up to a month or more to get the death certificate. The probate case can’t be opened without the death certificate. And then there’s the paperwork that needs to be prepared. The registrar, (the local magistrate) needs to sign off on opening the case, and letters testamentary (if the decedent had a will) or letters of administration (if the decedent did not have a will) must be issued. The court must determine if a bond is required. If there is more than one possible choice for personal representative, (such as when someone passes without a will) waivers must be signed and notarized. All this effort goes into opening the case.

Then there are the issues in the case - each one is unique. The preliminaries for all cases, however are notification of heirs and devisees, notification of creditors, preservation of the decedent’s personal information to make sure that it is not stolen, an inventory of the assets and the debts, the negotiations with the creditors, the placement of the children (if the decedent left any). These tasks can take months to get sorted out.

There is the waiting period after the notice of the opened estate is published. This is a four month time period that by law the creditors must submit their claims, or be forever barred by the Personal Representative.

After the time for the creditor claims have expired, there’s the preparation of the final inventory, the drafting of the new deeds, and the approval by the court at the closure hearing. The court has the option of keeping the case open, as per the Alaska statutes, for a full year after the Personal Representative has completed all of the tasks affiliated with the estate. In short, there are no fast and hard answers on how long an estate can take - each one is unique.

The Law Office Mailing Address (P O Box 72425 Fairbanks, AK 99707) will be remaining the same, but if you have an appointment, we’d love to offer you a cup of tea and a cookie in a comfortable environment!

As the goal of the Law Office is to provide quality customer service in a timely fashion that works for the clients; house calls will still continue for established clients if that is their preference.

The TTAB Blog is one that is regularly updated and discusses cases as they come out