Inventory Filed, Claims Window Open. What the Court Checks Before It Lets You Close

Once the court issues letters and the first anxious month passes, administration settles into a sequence that is more bookkeeping than grief. Nearly every state runs the same middle stretch in roughly the same order: report what the decedent owned, tell creditors they have a limited time to speak up, pay what is legitimately owed in the order the statute sets, file the tax returns, hand out what remains, and ask the judge to release you. The order matters more than the speed. An executor who distributes before the claim window closes has created a problem that is expensive, and sometimes personal, to fix.

1. The inventory is a valuation exercise, not a list of belongings

Most states want an inventory within sixty to ninety days of appointment, showing each probate asset at its date-of-death value rather than what it cost or what it might fetch next year. That distinction drives everything downstream, because the same figure sets the heirs' new tax basis. A careful reader checks three things before signing: that real estate carries an appraisal rather than a county assessment, that brokerage and bank balances are pulled as of the date of death rather than the statement date, and that non-probate assets with named beneficiaries, life insurance, retirement accounts, jointly titled property, are excluded. Household contents are usually reported in aggregate unless something is genuinely valuable.

2. Notice to creditors starts a clock you should want running

Publication in a local newspaper is the visible step, but it is the weaker half. Courts and creditors alike treat actual written notice to known or reasonably ascertainable creditors as the part that matters, and an executor who skips it can leave the claim period open against a creditor who never saw the notice. The window is short in most states, commonly a few months from first publication or from mailed notice, whichever governs. Pull the decedent's last twelve months of mail, bank statements, and credit report to build the mailing list. The point of the clock is finality: claims filed late are barred.

3. Debts get paid in statutory priority, not in the order they arrive

Every state sets a ranking, and the shape is consistent even when the details are not: costs of administration first, then funeral and last illness expenses, then taxes, then secured claims against their collateral, then general unsecured debt. Credit cards sit at the bottom. If the estate is solvent this ordering is academic, and you simply pay everything. If it is not, paying a sympathetic claimant ahead of a higher-ranked one can make you personally liable for the difference. That is the moment to hire an attorney rather than improvise, because insolvent estates are where executors get sued.

4. Two tax filings, sometimes three

The decedent still owes a final individual return covering January 1 through the date of death, due on the ordinary schedule the following spring. Separately, if the estate itself earns income during administration, rent, interest, dividends, a gain on a sold house, it files a fiduciary return under its own taxpayer identification number, which you request from the IRS, the agency responsible for both filings. A federal estate tax return is a different animal and applies only to estates above a threshold that changes with the law. Check whether your state imposes its own estate or inheritance tax, because several do at much lower levels.

5. Distribution, receipts, and the accounting that earns the discharge

Only after the claim window closes and taxes are settled does distribution become safe. The final accounting reconciles everything: what came in at inventory value, what was received during administration, what was paid out and to whom, and what remains for the beneficiaries. Courts want receipts, canceled checks, and signed acknowledgments from each heir. In many states the beneficiaries can waive a formal accounting and sign receipts and releases instead, which saves real money in attorney and filing costs. Either way, the discharge order is the document that ends your exposure, and it is worth waiting for.

Reserve a modest sum before the last distribution. A forgotten utility bill, a state tax notice, or the accountant's final invoice will arrive after you thought the file was closed, and clawing money back from heirs who have already spent it is the one step in this sequence with no procedure behind it.