Frequently asked questions

What is probate?

Oregon law provides a process known as probate to wind up a person’s financial affairs after their death. Probate gives creditors an opportunity to make claims against a person’s estate so the decedent’s bills get paid. It also sets a time limit for creditors to make a claim and once that time is up a creditor has no right to bother a decedent’s survivors to pay bills. Probate is the mechanism used to decide how to distribute a person’s money and property to their heirs, or those individuals named as beneficiaries in their will.

What is a professional fiduciary?

A Professional Fiduciary is a person or institution named in your legal documents to act on your behalf to manage your affairs and carry out your wishes when you are unable to. This is an umbrella term and may refer to someone serving as your Trustee, Personal Representative, Executor, Agent/ Power of Attorney, or other roles. See our Services page for a list of our offerings and descriptions.

I named Estate Administrators as my fiduciary, now what?

Once your documents are finalized with your attorney, we request a PDF copy of each document naming Estate Administrators (if you are comfortable sharing them with us). Your attorney can easily email us PDF copies for us to retain. As always, any information we receive from you or your attorney will be strictly confidential. It’s also helpful if you let us know where you will be storing your original documents. Sending us an email for us to keep in your file works best: info@estateadmins.com.

Can Estate Administrators create my estate plan for me?

No, we are not attorneys and do not draft estate plans. We recommend you work with an attorney that specializes in estate planning to ensure the legality and quality of your documents. There are many factors to consider when creating your estate plan that will not be accounted for if you decide to go the DIY route.

What is your fee structure?

For Trustee services, we keep detailed timesheets of the work we do during the trust administration and bill the trust quarterly. This is only once we are actually serving as trustee, we do not bill anything if we are named in your estate plan but you are managing your own affairs. We do not charge a percentage of the trust estate like some banks or other fiduciaries. If a probate is needed for your estate, we may take the statutory fee that Oregon sets for Personal Representatives. We hope that a probate is not needed for your estate if you are going through the effort of setting up a trust.

Do you serve as a medical fiduciary too? Will you be my healthcare representative under the Advance Directive?

On a case-by-case basis, we do accept nominations for medical fiduciary roles such as healthcare representatives or guardians. We are not medical professionals and only accept these nominations if our clients are very clear about their medical preferences and have attorney prepared documents that articulate their wishes. We prefer if a medical fiduciary, family member, or friend serves in this role, as it is more personal and does not require the same financial skillset that financial fiduciary roles do.