By Roman Aminov,
When a will is admitted and the court signs off, families often assume the hardest part is behind them. The executor is holding a document called Letters Testamentary, and the relief is understandable. The real work, though, is just starting. Everything the decedent owned still sits exactly where they left it, and the executor now has to collect it one institution at a time. The formal name for this is marshaling assets, and it comes down to three things. Locate every asset held in the decedent's sole name, prove your authority to whoever is holding it, and move the proceeds into a single estate account.
The assignment process is not complicated, what makes it demanding is that no two institutions run the process the same way, and none of them coordinate with each other.
Letters Testamentary prove your authority, but banks care about how recent that proof is. Many will not accept a certified copy older than six months, so I recommend ordering several extra copies from the Surrogate's Court clerk while you are already there. It costs little and spares you a return trip in the middle of everything else.
The estate also needs its own tax identification number before a single account can be opened. A person's Social Security number stops working at death, and no bank will set up an estate checking account without a federal EIN. It takes only minutes to get one online, yet it is the step families overlook most often. Once the account exists, every dollar you collect belongs there and nowhere else, not in a personal account "just until things settle." Beneficiaries and the court both read commingled funds as a problem, even when nothing improper happened, and the executor is the one left explaining it.
Assume the person helping you at the branch has rarely handled a deceased customer's account and is following prompts on a screen. That is not a criticism of bank staff. Most of them simply see this a few times a year. Expect a request for the bank's own affidavit form, a hold while a compliance team in another office reviews the file, and an account that gets closed and reissued as a check rather than transferred. When statements have gone missing and you cannot even tell what accounts existed, a written request backed by Letters tends to get a real answer where a phone call gets you passed around. Knowing this in advance keeps the frustration manageable.
Investment accounts run on stricter rules than bank accounts. Shares held in the decedent's name have to be re-registered into the estate before they can be sold or handed to a beneficiary, and the transfer agent will almost certainly ask for a medallion signature guarantee. That stamp is not the same as notarization. Only certain financial institutions participate in the program that issues it, and some will turn away anyone who is not already their customer, so it is worth lining up early. Record the value of each holding as of the date of death as well, since that figure sets the tax basis and settles the arguments that otherwise start when beneficiaries remember the balance three different ways.
There is a quieter duty underneath all of this. An executor who watches a single volatile stock slide for months, doing nothing, can be held personally responsible for the loss. Choosing not to act is still a choice, and a court will treat it as one. If you are unsure whether a holding needs attention, that is exactly the point to ask for guidance on the estate administration process before the drift becomes a problem.
Some of the biggest balances a family is counting on never pass through the executor's hands, and it helps to say so out loud early. Joint accounts with survivorship rights generally belong to the surviving owner the moment of death. Payable-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death brokerage registrations, retirement accounts, and life insurance all go straight to whoever is named on the paperwork. The will has no authority over any of them. I have seen a carefully written will that split everything evenly among three children undone by one beneficiary form nobody had updated since the 1990s. Checking those designations before the family divides anything up prevents a lot of hurt feelings.
The mistakes I see rarely come from bad intent. They come from doing things in the wrong order. Paying beneficiaries before valid creditors are handled can leave the executor personally responsible for the gap, and creditors have seven months from the day Letters are issued to bring claims. Rushing that clock to satisfy an impatient relative is a poor trade. The other common problem is an incomplete filing. A voluntary administration for a small estate is fast and inexpensive, but the administrator can only collect the specific assets listed on the affidavit. Find a forgotten brokerage account afterward and you are reopening paperwork instead of closing the estate. Keep the estate's money separate from your own, document every step, and respect the creditor window. Handle those three things and most of what remains is logistics.
If you're in Queens, Brooklyn, Nassau County, or the greater New York City area and need help marshaling estate bank accounts and brokerage assets, contact our office today at 347-766-2685. We'll guide you through every step of the Surrogate's Court process with clarity and care.
