If you are settling a loved one’s estate in Westchester, the most common first question is: what will it cost to probate the will at the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court? The honest answer has two parts. The court itself charges a graduated filing fee that scales with the size of the estate under SCPA §2402 — there is no single
If your loved one died owning $50,000 or less in personal property in Westchester County, you can likely settle the estate with a small estate affidavit (voluntary administration under SCPA Article 13) instead of filing for full probate. If the personal property exceeds that amount, or if the decedent owned real estate that must pass through the estate, you will
Preliminary Letters Testamentary are an interim grant of authority issued by the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court under SCPA §1412 that lets the executor named in a will begin administering the estate before the will is fully admitted to probate. In other words, when a Westchester estate needs immediate attention — a house to secure, a bank account to access, a
In most cases, an uncontested probate in Westchester County takes about three to six months from the date you file the petition until the executor receives Letters Testamentary and can begin administering the estate. That is the headline answer — but the full picture depends on how quickly the will is located, whether all the distributees sign waivers, and whether
When someone dies without a will in Westchester County, the law — not the deceased — decides who inherits the estate and who is put in charge of settling it. This is called dying “intestate,” and New York’s intestacy statute (EPTL Article 4) provides a fixed order of inheritance based on family relationships. Instead of probating a will, the family
You are not legally required to hire a lawyer to probate a will in Westchester County, but in practice it is strongly advisable for almost every estate. New York does not mandate that an executor retain an attorney to open a probate proceeding in the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court. However, the proceeding is governed by the Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act