Prepare Legal Alabama Small Estates Forms For Free

How to File Probate Without a Lawyer - A Step-by-Step Guide Petition the court. The probate process won't begin automatically. ... Notify heirs, beneficiaries, and other interested parties. ... Change the legal name of the assets. ... Pay creditors and tax payments first. ... Pay funds to heirs. ... Report back to the court and close the estate.

File a petition with the local probate court asking to use the simplified procedure. The petition must include a description of the estate (usually a list of the property that the deceased person owned and its value). File a will, if there is one. Pay funeral expenses and other debts.

Instead of a small estate affidavit, Alabama allows for distribution of small estates through an abbreviated estate process known as summary distribution. To qualify for summary distribution, the estate must meet the criteria of a ?small estate? as defined by the statute.

Most states have a ?small estates? rule that allows you to avoid probate entirely, as long as the estate value doesn't pass a certain threshold. In Alabama, if an estate doesn't have any real property and the value doesn't exceed $25,000, after waiting 30 days, you can use what's known as a summary probate procedure.

The Alabama Small Estates Act was passed in 1979 and amended in 2009. This Act provides a method, through a court proceeding, to distribute personal property of a deceased person in a summary distribution manner to a surviving spouse, or appropriate distributes of the decedent, without full probate administration.

Alabama permits the distribution of small estates via a streamlined estate process called summary distribution. A spouse or inheritor must petition the local probate court requesting that it use the simplified procedure for this case.