No. of Recommendations: 2
In my case it took me longer to get my beneficiary share of my father's estate from Vanguard (I mention why above) but I believe (well, fairly certain), my brother got his 50% share much sooner. So he did not have to wait for me to complete anything.
Fortunately we had few things we had to deal with. My father had accounts at Vanguard and TRowePrice, life insurance, ownership of the retirement apartment, a car, furniture, bank account and I think that was it.
Life insurance was pretty easy. Upload a death certificate and fill out a form. The only issue was that their web email had a size limitation and no one could tell me what it was. The resolution was to split the attachments into multiple emails and then my brother and I were sent a check.
TRowePrice was fairly easy. Mine was a big more involved since I don't have an account with them but my brother did. I gave the car to my brother and I took some of the furniture.
The apartment process I thought was a bit unfair but didn't shock me. First you have to clean the possessions out. Then you have to pay 3 more months of rent AND you have to pay some kind of fix up fee to "modernize" it. That was something like $20K. And finally you didn't get the money back until the place was re-purchased so we didn't see any money until 9+ months after he passed away.
I got a Tax EIN for the estate and set up a bank account for it. That was mostly a waste of time/effort since we only received one check made to the estate. I want to say it was from the state taxes.
I don't envy those with more complicated estates or ones that didn't have beneficiaries or wills set up prior to death.
Good luck
Rich
