After receiving the news that a dear family member has passed, the last thing on your mind will be the care of their house. Unfortunately, many houses are forced into probate when they aren’t legally bequeathed to an inheritor. This can be an impactful loss for a family that has just lost a family member. In your case, the management of the probate house might be up to you. Here are a few tips for navigating how to handle a house in probate.
Care for the Home
First, make sure that the home is taken care of while you’re working on resolving the legal matters with house probation. Keeping the house organized and clean after the passing of its owner can be a helpful and cathartic process for you. It will also keep the house in good condition. If there is nobody living near the home, you might want to hire someone to go check on the home regularly. You also might want to keep paying for some of the utilities so the house is taken care of. This will also give it a lived-in appearance that will dissuade robbers from breaking and entering. Even just having a light on a timer each night can help protect the house from theft.
Regain Ownership
If you want to regain legal ownership of the house, you’re going to need to go through some legal processes in the probate court. The probate court temporarily has ownership of the house, since it no longer has a legal owner. To regain ownership, you’ll be working through legal processes with a team of judges and lawyers. These processes can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, but if the house matters a lot to your family, that time will be well worth it.
Sell without a Hassle
If you don’t have time to go to probate court and don’t have the capacity to care for the house yourself, your next best option might be to sell the house in probate. Unfortunately, because of their lack of legal ownership, probate houses can be a little complicated to sell. Cash home buying businesses are some of the few buyers that are capable of purchasing a probate house. They will purchase your house for 100% cash without requiring you to list, clean, stage, inspect, or repair your home. Some cash buyers won’t even need you to empty your home completely! This is super helpful if you don’t live near the probate home and are trying to sell quickly and easily.
So, if you end up responsible for a probate house, remember this article for tips on how to handle that situation. Make sure that you care for the home over time as you attend probate court. If you don’t want to go that direction, sell to a cash buyer and use the funds to provide greater financial stability to the family of your passed loved one.
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