By Roman Aminov,
Celebrated for extensive experience helping New York executors collect bank accounts, transfer brokerage holdings, and settle estates through Surrogate's Court, with hundreds of heartfelt client testimonials, Roman Aminov delivers thoughtful, individualized solutions to our clients' needs and wishes.
Marshaling is the legal term for gathering everything the decedent owned in their own name, proving your authority to each institution that holds those assets, and consolidating the money into a single estate account. It sounds like one task. In practice it means dealing separately with every bank, brokerage, and transfer agent, each running its own paperwork process with no interest in what the others will accept. Our team handles that coordination for executors across Queens and the wider city, so the burden of chasing down accounts does not fall entirely on you during an already difficult period.
Nothing moves until the Surrogate's Court issues Letters Testamentary, the document confirming your authority to act for the estate. Banks and brokerages often refuse certified copies older than six months, so we order extra copies at the outset rather than send you back to the clerk later. The estate also needs its own federal Employer Identification Number, because a decedent's Social Security number cannot be used to open an account. We obtain the EIN, set up the estate account, and make sure every dollar collected flows into that one account and nowhere else. Mixing estate funds with personal money is one of the fastest ways an executor loses credibility, and we make sure it never happens on our watch.
Most bank employees process a deceased customer's account only a handful of times a year, so delays and mixed messages are common rather than exceptional. Expect the branch to request its own proprietary affidavit, place a compliance hold, or close the account and reissue the balance as a check instead of a transfer. When statements have gone missing, a written demand backed by Letters usually produces records that a phone call never will. We know which document each major institution wants and send it in the form they accept, which shortens a process that otherwise stretches on for weeks.
Securities cannot simply be released to an executor. Shares must be re-registered into the estate's name before anything can be sold or distributed, and the transfer agent will almost always require a medallion signature guarantee, a specialized stamp that only participating financial institutions can issue. Values also have to be fixed as of the date of death, which sets the tax basis and prevents disputes among beneficiaries later. There is a duty at work here too. An executor who lets a volatile stock slide for months can be held personally responsible for the loss, so we help you act on time-sensitive holdings rather than let them drift.
Some of the largest accounts a family expects to inherit never pass through the executor. Joint accounts with survivorship rights, payable-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death brokerage registrations, retirement accounts, and life insurance all go directly to the named survivor or beneficiary, regardless of what the will says. We review these designations early and explain to the family what the estate actually controls, which heads off painful misunderstandings before anyone starts counting on money that was never theirs to distribute.
Executors rarely get into trouble through bad intent. The problems come from sequence and omission. Distributing to beneficiaries before valid creditors are paid can leave you personally responsible for the shortfall, and creditors have seven months from the issuance of Letters to present claims. In a small estate proceeding, a voluntary administrator can only collect the assets listed on the affidavit, so a forgotten account means amending papers instead of closing the file. We keep the timeline, the paperwork, and the accounting in order so the estate closes cleanly and your exposure stays where it belongs, at zero. Bring us in at the start and the whole process gets simpler.
Visit us at https://www.aminovlaw.com/ or call us at (347) 766-2685 to get your free consultation.
