Harrison Estate Law Letters of Administration

Have you ever wondered what a Letter of Administration is? Are you wondering now that you've read the title of this video and are thinking to yourself 'I've never heard of that'? Luckily, this video will explain what they are, why you would need one, and how Harrison Estate Law can assist you in getting one.

Video Transcription

In this video, I want to answer the question, what are letters of administration? This is a question that comes up a lot and people often call us and ask us if we can get letters of administration for them. Where this may come up is if you've had a loved one pass away, someone we call the decedent, and they had a bank account that was just in their name or maybe a life insurance policy where they never designated anyone as a beneficiary. So you went to the bank or you called the life insurance company, and they told you, "We can't tell you anything about this account or give you any of the money until you give us letters of administration," or sometimes called letters testamentary.

You may have even showed them the will, and that wasn't enough, that didn't satisfy them. So what letters of administration are, it's not actually a letter, it's actually a court order that a judge enters in a court proceeding called a probate. Probate proceeding is the type of court proceeding that occurs when a loved one passes away, and the court gets involved to distribute their assets and make sure they go to their heirs in an orderly fashion. So what happens when a probate is open is that the judge will sign an order to give someone the authority to access the bank account, or the life insurance policy, or whatever the property might be that the decedent has left, and place it into the probate process, so that the heirs can actually get a share of it.

In Florida, there's actually a few different types of probate that can be done depending on whether it is the decedent had creditors, which means if they owed someone money, and the types of assets involved, whether it's a home or a life insurance policy or a bank account. Our law firm specializes in doing all sorts of probates all over the state of Florida. As long as the person who passed away was living in the state of Florida when they passed, we can help you with it. You won't need to travel to Gainesville. And in most of our cases, you won't even need to make a court appearance because we can handle everything for you. It can all be handled by mail or by DocuSign or eNotary. Give us a call now or click the link below to tell us more about your case, so we can schedule a free consultation. Thanks for watching.