Conflicts between interested persons and personal representatives in Lombard are common. And while issues do arise from expectations and potentially negligent administrators, it is not impossible to find resolution and peace of mind. With the help of an attorney, you could challenge decisions made by administrators if your grounds for the challenge is valid as an interested person. Reach out to an attorney who could help today.
Conflicts between interested persons and personal representatives are mostly resolved in court. Generally, a conflict involving an estate results in litigation, meaning the filing of various pleadings. These conflicts are litigated similar to any other lawsuit. There are pleadings, motions, and hearings, so those conflicts are resolved in court.
It is possible for a conflict to be resolved out of court. However, that could be more difficult because the personal representative needs to get signatures of everybody with respect to an agreement that they reached regarding a dispute. Oftentimes, it takes the intervention of a court to at least move all the parties and all the interested persons towards some sort of agreement.
Examples of these kinds of estate issues include conflicts between interested persons and personal representatives regarding the sale of real property. Many of these conflicts result from issues with personal property because there could be wildly different opinions on what a piece of real property is worth, what should be done with the property, and who is living within the property.
Sometimes, there are allegations that the representative was trying to throw away assets of an estate and that they were not working hard enough to obtain the proper sales price for the property. Lawyers often hear comments about how representatives could have done more to increase the value of an estate before selling it. Disputes could arise just because different people have different ideas of how best to maximize the value of the estate. However, this is often a speculative claim.
Other types of conflict could result from the sale of stock or holding onto stock too long. For example, if an administrator is holding onto stock or some other type of investment that could lose value, and it takes longer than they would like for the estate to resolve and the stock decreases in value, there could be issues with respect to conflicts.
Some common misconceptions about the rights of interested persons include the fact that a creditor is an interested person. Most people involved with an estate are family members, a close friend, or some other loved one who has an interest in the estate. It could be very counterintuitive to imagine that Comcast, some other cable company, an insurance company, or a hospital is an interested person in the estate, but they are.
Generally, that misconception needs to be clarified as soon as possible. Even though this person/entity is not a family member and everybody knows that the decedent did not want their property to go to their creditors, the fact remains that those creditors are still interested persons.
Another misconception involves people who are maybe heirs but not legatees believing that they are entitled to some share in the estate. However, if there is a will which does not bequeath them anything, they are not. Even though their parent may have chosen to leave them out of the will, just because they are a child does not mean they are guaranteed some sort of pecuniary entitlement.
When someone dies, retirement accounts are generally distributed based on a beneficiary designation. Since retirement accounts are usually tax-deferred, there many rules that the IRS has as to what happens with that tax-deferred account. A common scenario could involve a spouse who rolls over an IRA to their 401K into their own account, and then they would just use their own life, age, and life expectancy in determining RMDs or required mandatory distributions.
Most of the time, beneficiaries want to take advantage of that tax-deferred benefit as much as possible. This could be done in the case of a surviving spouse. However, if all other persons receive an inherited IRA, then most of the time the entire amount of that account needs to be distributed over the course of five years. If they are over 70 and a half, they could use their own life expectancy when it comes to taking RMDs.
But the important thing to remember is that if an individual is a beneficiary of an IRA, they need to consult with an attorney and an accountant as to how they should treat that inherited benefit. It comes down to the IRS, to making sure that they are following their rules when they inherit a retirement account, and to taking RMDs if they have to or withdrawing the account in accordance with the five-year rule.
Without the help of a distinguished attorney, conflicts between interested persons and personal representatives in Lombard could occur. It is surprisingly common for people to come to dissatisfied conclusions when estates are not distributed as they had assumed they would be. However, there may be legal recourse against negligent or irresponsible administrators. To see if your claim is valid, call to speak with an attorney.
