Settle the Estate With Confidence — Virginia Probate and Estate Administration Attorneys

When someone you love dies, the last thing you want is a stack of legal paperwork and a court process you have never navigated. Yet if you have been named an executor or a successor trustee, that is often exactly what lands in your lap when you are right in the middle of grieving.

You do not have to carry the responsibility of settling a loved one’s estate alone. Our Virginia probate and estate administration attorneys can guide you through the process of settling an estate or administering a trust. And if you are reading this to plan ahead, we can help your own loved ones avoid the same burden later.

What Is Probate in Virginia?

Probate is the court-supervised process of proving a will is valid and transferring a person's assets after death. If there is no will, there is no will to prove — but the estate still goes through the court process. Technically that process is called administration: the clerk qualifies an administrator, who carries essentially the same duties as an executor, and the estate passes under Virginia's intestacy laws instead of the wishes the person had in mind.

Two assumptions trip families up. The first is that when there is no will, dividing assets becomes a free-for-all. The second is that when there is a will, everything passes automatically to the people named in it. Both are false. In Virginia, most estates move through the court process either way — handled in the clerk's office of the local circuit court, with ongoing oversight by a court-appointed commissioner of accounts.

Why Families Often Try to Avoid Probate

Probate works, but it comes with real drawbacks — which is why so many families plan to sidestep it when they can:

• It takes time. A typical Virginia estate takes a year or more to settle, and often 16 months or longer to close completely — the first accounting is not due until 16 months after qualification, and a personal representative who pays claims inside the first 12 months keeps exposure to a creditor he did not know about.
• It costs money. Virginia charges a probate tax of 10 cents per $100 of the estate's value — with most localities adding a further one-third of that amount, and no tax at all on estates of $15,000 or less — and clerk's fees, surety bond premiums, commissioner of accounts fees, and professional fees add up on top of it.
• It is public. Anyone can look up what the estate held and who received what.

None of that means probate is something to fear. With guidance, it becomes a manageable process instead of an overwhelming one — and much of it can be simplified or avoided with the right planning.

What an Executor or Successor Trustee Has to Do

If you have been named a personal representative or successor trustee, you have been handed a job with legal duties and personal responsibility attached. The typical tasks include:

• Notifying beneficiaries and heirs
• Locating, valuing, and safeguarding assets
• Identifying and paying valid creditor claims
• Filing final tax returns and paying debts and expenses
• Distributing what remains according to the will or trust

In Virginia, much of this work is reviewed by the Commissioner of Accounts — an attorney appointed by the circuit court to confirm the estate is handled properly. An inventory is due within four months of qualification and a first accounting within 16 months, with annual accountings after that. Miss a deadline, pay the wrong party, or pay claims out of the order Virginia law requires, and you can be held personally responsible — and a late filing can cost you your commission for that year, with the costs of the enforcement proceeding payable out of your own pocket.

That is a heavy weight to carry alone, especially while grieving. If the responsibility is more than you want to take on, our affiliated fiduciary services company, Virginia Fiduciary Solutions, PLLC, can serve as executor or trustee in your place.

How Our Attorneys Help You Settle an Estate or Trust

Every estate is different, but our role stays the same: we take the legal and administrative load off your shoulders and keep things moving. Founding attorney Scott Alperin and our team have guided Hampton Roads families through this process for nearly three decades.

Probate and Estate Administration

We help executors qualify with the court, prepare and file the required inventories and accountings, resolve creditor claims, retitle or sell real estate, and distribute assets correctly.

Trust Administration

Successor trustees often lack the time, resources, or legal knowledge to administer a trust on their own. We guide you through notifying beneficiaries, managing and distributing assets, and closing the trust — whether or not our office drafted the original document.

Planning Ahead to Avoid Probate

If you are reading this before a loss, you have a real advantage: you can spare your family much of what is described above. As part of a review of your estate planning, we look for the simplest ways to keep assets out of probate.

Revocable Living Trusts

A revocable living trust holds title to your assets while you are alive, with you typically serving as trustee. On your death or incapacity, your successor trustee manages or distributes the trust assets without probate and without becoming public record. The important caveat is funding: a trust only avoids probate for the assets actually retitled into it, and an unfunded trust is the most common reason a family ends up in probate anyway despite having paid for one. We follow the retitling through rather than handing you a binder and wishing you luck.

Beneficiary Designations and Joint Ownership

Virginia also allows transfer-on-death and pay-on-death designations on accounts, plus transfer-on-death deeds for real estate under Virginia's Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act. Joint ownership with rights of survivorship can also pass property directly. These tools are simple and useful, but they are not a plan on their own: if the estate's other assets fall short, Virginia law lets the estate reach pay-on-death account funds to cover debts, taxes, and administration expenses — and none of these designations does anything to address incapacity, a minor beneficiary, or a beneficiary with a disability.

Estate Administration Rarely Stands Alone

Settling an estate touches nearly every other part of a family's financial life, so we do not handle it in a vacuum. Because our attorneys work alongside our in-house tax and wealth teams, the pieces stay coordinated.

Virginia imposes no state estate tax and, with narrow exceptions for certain remainder interests, no inheritance tax. Tax returns still have to be filed, however — the decedent's final individual return, and in many estates a fiduciary income tax return for income the estate earns after death. Larger estates may also face federal estate tax. Our tax team can prepare those returns as part of the process.

Other pieces get coordinated, too. A family company is handled with our business succession attorneys; a beneficiary with a disability may need a special needs trust so an inheritance does not cost them their benefits; and if your loved one received Medicaid at age 55 or older, the Department of Medical Assistance Services may file an estate recovery claim. Our Medicaid planning attorneys can help you evaluate and respond to it — including whether a hardship waiver applies, or whether the claim is barred because a surviving spouse, a child under 21, or a child who is blind or has a disability survives.

Handled together, these pieces protect both the family and the legacy you want to pass on to the next generation.

Talk With Our Hampton Roads Probate and Estate Administration Attorneys

You should not have to face a loved one's estate — or plan your own — without steady guidance. Our probate and estate administration attorneys serve families across Hampton Roads, including Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg, Poquoson, and the Eastern Shore, along with Northeastern North Carolina, including Moyock and the Outer Banks. Schedule your confidential discovery meeting today, and we'll give you a clear read on where things stand and what comes next.