Creditors' Rights 24
Q: One of my customers recently
passed away. There is a large balance
still due on his account. How do I
approach this situation to increase my
chances of collecting on this account?
A: The most important thing to
do is to determine if an estate has
been opened. The easiest way to do
this is to visit the Orphans' Court
Division of the Court of Common
Pleas and provide them with the
name of the debtor and the date of death. They can check their
records to see if an estate has been opened for the decedent. If you
establish that an estate has been opened, you then need to determine
from the estate records if there are any assets in the estate.
Distributions of estate assets will be made under the statutory priority
set forth in the Probate, Estates and Fiduciaries Code. General
creditors are low on that priority list, and there are other expenses
that must be paid first before creditors can be paid. If there are estate
assets, you should file a Notice of Claim with the estate and send a
copy of that notice to the executor/administrator of the estate and to
the attorney for the estate.
If, on the other hand, an estate has not been opened, the debt is not
likely to be collected. This situation, i.e., no estate opened, generally
occurs in situations where the debtor had placed his assets in joint
names with a spouse or his children, as part of his estate planning
process, so that all of the assets passed by operation of law, to the surviving
joint holder, upon the death of the debtor, without having to
go through the probate process.
