The Real Estate Probate Process
Good Day Everyone,
I am a real estate lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding PA and New Jersey suburbs. I started out on this path almost ten years ago and it has taken me down a number of weird, winding paths that occasionally have felt like dead ends. That is also a great way to describe the probate work that I do for my real estate clients.
Probate, in the context of the real estate legal world that I inhabit, is the process of determining the ownership of a property that has a deceased owner, typically one who has died without a will.
Oftentimes my investor clients come to me with an “heir” to a property that claims they are the one true heir and their claim to the throne surpasses anyone else’s. The problem? The title company charged with insuring the transfer tells my client that, for one reason or another, the heir does not yet have the legal right to sell the property. That is where we step in.
The first step is determining exactly WHO is entitled to inherit a property (and therefore entitled to sell the property to my client) is pulling the deed. Once we have the deed we can examine the current titled ownership and determine who is who. Was there a co-owner? Did the co-owner die before the heir’s relative?
We take the current ownership and, with the help of the potential heir, map out a family tree that we can use to create a game plan. Even folks with the best intentions will fail to mention things that are not nearly as inconsequential as they think, for example they might forget to mention that the deceased had other biological children from a different marriage, or that they are actually not a technical blood relative of a deceased lineal heir. Things can get tricky and emotions can be stirred up.
As we go along on this detective mission, oftentimes through the Register of Wills Office and records room, we can uncover road blocks that represent significant time and money investments that have to be made on the path to taking ownership of the property. Sometimes, we end up having to open 2 or 3 estates in order to get your heir the ability to sell the property. Sometimes, there are just so many layers involved that we have to take an alternative approach to determine who has title to the property, such as filing a petition in the Orphan’s Court to determine title. Oftentimes, my clients will realize that it is just too time (or money) required and scrap the whole project.
There is no honest way to shortcut this work, but as experienced and honest real estate probate attorneys, Console Matison LLP can help you as an investor or as an heir yourself navigate the probate system and help ensure that someone is able to claim title to the property for the purpose of ownership or sale. As always, give us a call at 267-603-2493 or email me at joe@consolelegal.com if you have any questions or would like to schedule a consult.
