Protecting families, estates and futures in Queens.

Probate is the court process by which New York confirms that a will is valid, then works through what happens to the property. The Surrogate’s Court accepts the will, an executor or administrator is appointed, assets are gathered and valued, creditors are notified and paid, and whatever is left is distributed to the people named in the will — or, if there is no will, to the people New York law names.

New York requires a waiting period to pass after a death before most probate petitions may be filed, so no estate is settled immediately. Beyond that statutory period, a full administration commonly takes many months rather than weeks, and the honest answer is that nobody can promise you a date in advance. What actually drives the length is the size and complexity of the estate, whether property has to be sold, whether the will is contested, whether creditor claims and tax filings need attention, and how the Surrogate’s Court calendar is running. If you have been given a specific deadline, tell me — that changes the order of work substantially.

Without a will, New York’s intestacy laws decide who inherits. The distribution is set by statute: a surviving spouse and descendants come first, and if there are no descendants the estate passes outward through parents, then brothers and sisters, and so on. It also becomes harder to know which assets pass through probate at all. In a blended family, or where a partner is not legally married, or where there are children from more than one relationship, intestacy can produce a result nobody in the family would have chosen. A properly executed will removes that uncertainty.

No, and this is the single most useful thing to establish early. A small estate may qualify for simplified administration, which is a much lighter process. And any asset that is properly titled — in a revocable trust, as a beneficiary of a retirement account, or with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designation — generally passes to that beneficiary without probate at all. The reason to look carefully is that a great deal of what families own is titled in ways that defeat their plan. A house held only in the deceased’s name, for example, usually does go through probate.

An executor is the person named in the will whose job is to carry it out. In practice that means gathering the paperwork, identifying and valuing the estate’s assets, securing and valuing the property, paying creditors and taxes in the right order, keeping careful records, filing an inventory and then accountings with the court, and finally distributing what remains. The Surrogate’s Court supervises this. It is a substantial administrative job with real legal duties attached, and it is quite common for an executor to hire a lawyer to handle the court work while they continue to manage the estate.

Suite 504 at 118-21 Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, New York 11375. The telephone number is (718) 544-1000. Forest Hills is a short drive or ride from the Queens County Surrogate’s Court in Kew Gardens and the Queens criminal courthouse, which is relevant if you have a court date there.

Enquiries are handled in the order they arrive and as promptly as the practice can manage, but I would rather tell you plainly that I cannot guarantee a response time than promise one I cannot keep. If your situation is urgent — a court date, a filing deadline, a family member in immediate difficulty — please call (718) 544-1000 rather than sending a message through this site. If you would rather email, the address is contact@queens-probatelawyer.com.