Looking for advice from those who have gone through probate for an inheritance.?

My father passed away 2 weeks ago. His mother had a stroke on the 2nd and I found out today that there is nothing more we can do but bring in hospice. Neither planned anything. No funeral arrangement, no will, no estate planning, nothing.

I hired an attorney to acquire emergency guardianship / conservatorships for both of them. My father passed away before we could secure it. It looks my grandmother will as well.

I am my father's only heir but will split my grandmother's estate with my cousin.

The insurance company is requiring me to hire an attorney as co-administrator of their estates. Any advice on the process of probate and any advice on minimizing expenses, attorney's fees, etc... would be really helpful.

I am really curious about how I am supposed to pay their bills when I don't have access to their bank accounts.

Your addendum, I can answer.

If you have the money, pay the bills but keep EXTREMELY good records. You can charge those bills to the grandmother's estate BEFORE it gets split. As to your father's estate, same rule applies except from your comments, that won't be split.

Reimbursements from an estate for expenses incurred can reduce the size of the estate, don't count as income for you, and therefore can't be taxed either way - income OR inheritance. But you DO have to justify and properly account for the expenses. Receipts are a MUST.

If you DON'T have the money required, advise the creditors that this is an estate issue. Fortunately, I got power of attorney on my mother's holdings BEFORE she reached 2nd stage Alzheimer's, so I had signature authority on her bank account. In more ways than one, I wish I had not needed it.

I think the insurance company's game here is that in some states, the executor of an estate cannot also be the primary beneficiary - conflict of interests thing if I understand the theory. The only way to minimize costs has already passed for your father's estate and might be too late for the other estate as well. If you had gotten earlier power of attorney, a lot of expense issues would have been cheaply settled. But now, I think you are stuck.

hire an attorney, and what ever you do dont keep bugging him by phone, they charge for this and trust me i have been through this and the phone calls adds up. when you hire them they do the work and they will call or write you if any news.

well there is truely no other way to cut the cost back..with out a will the only thing is call in a very good attorney or a good lawyer. But make sure either of them are not going to ripe you off as if your not that smart and they can see it..they will lie to you and get what they want. The best way you can try is ask other family like aunts uncles..or even long long time friends that would help you out and make sure your get intouch with the right people. My mom,dad were both put in a home to be looked after and my brother took over and clean out the whole house with out tell me or my sister to see if we wanted anything. He went to a lawyer and had things done in court two months and lie his way and got some things done. Now this is the bad part. After he did that he had a form sent to my sister and we had to give the the lawyer two day to answer this. He is trying to get everything and rip us off of are rights. His wife mom,and dad both just died and I know cause he is greedy he will not stop at getting stuff he wants out of that as well..but she has a few brother and god i hope they can see what he is up to. Yes you need to get someone to help in this..it will be costly. Make all calls very short. they will charge you for calls and paper work as well and even a e-mail ..as I had to pay for that. AS time goes on it will get costly