Gabe Albrecht

Real Estate Transitions Advisory

What actually happens, and roughly when.

Nobody can tell you your timeline until they know what kind of case you're in. Here's the shape of it, and where the house usually fits.

This is Wisconsin procedure as it runs in Dane County. Your attorney decides what applies to your estate and none of this is legal advice. Every date that matters to you is on your own paperwork.

What this page can do is tell you what the sequence looks like, so the paperwork stops being a surprise.

Where it starts

The will gets filed and somebody applies.

If there's a will, it goes to the Register in Probate. Somebody applies to be appointed, and that somebody is usually the person the will names, or a close family member when there's no will.

Most Wisconsin estates go the informal route, which runs through the Register in Probate rather than in front of a judge. The formal version exists for cases where the will requires it or the family disagrees, and Dane County's own probate guide says formal administration requires an attorney to represent the estate.

The first real milestone

Then letters issue, and that's the date that matters.

Letters is the document proving the court put someone in charge. Until it exists there's an applicant and not a personal representative, and an applicant can't sign a listing contract, accept an offer, or convey title.

Most people brace for a long wait here and don't get one. I read all fifty five open estates filed in Dane County in one month, docket by docket, and the median gap between the filing and the letters was one day. But better than one in four took longer than two weeks, and the longest ran months.

So it's usually fast, and sometimes it isn't. If yours is one of the slow ones there's generally a reason, and the reason is worth understanding before you plan around it.

Three to four months in

The claims window opens.

Notice to creditors gets published, and anyone the estate owes money gets a window to say so. Wisconsin sets that deadline at not less than three and not more than four months from the date of the order, under Statute 859.01. Your own date is printed on your notice.

This is the part of the calendar that sets everything after it, because an estate can't close until the claims date has passed.

Within six months of appointment

The inventory comes due.

The inventory is the list of what the estate owns and what each piece was worth on the date of death. Wisconsin gives the personal representative a reasonable time and no later than six months after appointment, unless the court has ordered otherwise. That's Statute 858.01.

The house goes on this list, at its date of death value rather than today's value. On a house that's appreciated since, those are two different numbers and only one of them belongs on the form.

I can put a date of death value together for you or send it straight to your attorney. It is not an appraisal and it says so on its face. Your attorney will tell you whether your estate needs the appraisal instead.

The part no form prepares you for

The middle stretch, which is where the house lives.

The claims window is running, the inventory is filed or nearly, and the house is sitting there needing decisions that nobody felt ready to make in the first few weeks.

It's also when the house question stops being theoretical. Somebody has to decide whether it sells, whether it needs anything first, and who's going to be there for the walkthrough, the cleanout and the locks. If the family is spread out, that weight lands on one person, and usually it's you.

There's no rush on any of this

But there is a difference between waiting on purpose and waiting because nobody knew what the next step was.

When the house can actually sell

A title company is going to want to see the letters.

Depending on how the appointment was made, they may want more than that.

Roughly one estate in five in that month carried special administration authority rather than full letters, and a special administrator frequently cannot sell real property without the court's express authorization. If your paperwork says special administration, that's a question to put to your attorney before the house goes on the market, not after an offer comes in.

The words on that paperwork are on the glossary page, if any of them are new.

Twelve months, in theory

Closing the estate.

An estate can be closed any time after the final date to file claims has passed. The Wisconsin Court System's own guide to informal administration says it should be closed within twelve months of the date the estate was opened.

In practice

When it runs long, and it often does.

Running past twelve months is common enough that it shouldn't feel like failure. In that same month of Dane County filings, at least one deadline extension shows up on about a third of the cases, and about a quarter picked up a notice that the inventory was overdue.

A few go further and draw an order to show cause, which is the court asking on the record why something hasn't happened. It reads worse than it usually is.

In my experience reading these dockets, what's actually stuck is very often the house. Not the paperwork, not the family, and not the attorney. The house needs a decision, the decision needs information nobody has yet, and the calendar keeps moving while everybody waits.

Being straight with you

What this page can't tell you.

It can't tell you your dates. Those are on your own notice and they're specific to your case. It can't tell you which procedure your estate is in, and it can't tell you what your attorney should do next.

What it can do is let you walk into that conversation knowing the shape of the thing. If the house is the part that's stuck, that's the part I can help with, and you don't have to be selling anything to ask.