Hello and thank you for your question.
Although I cannot give you a definitive answer without seeing the Will
and knowing what State's probate court has jurisdiction (and anyway
Google Answers cannot provide actual legal advice) it is safe to say
that you and your co-beneficiary can make whatever deal that suits the
two of you.
What you would be selling to your co-beneficiary is your rights to the
estate asset in question, and your rights to your share of the
proceeds of sale of that asset if the executor sells that asset to a
third party before probate is done. In other words, you're not
selling the asset itself--that belongs to the estate for now and only
the executor can sell it.
It would still be a good idea to submit a copy of your agreement to
the Court along with a proposed Order for the judge to sign approving
the transaction, especially if one or both of you are also the
executors of the estate, in which case the judge will probably require
you to notify the rest of the beneficiaries of what is going on in
case any of them have an objection.
But there's no reason to think you can't do this while the probate
process is underway.
Here is a typical State rule, showing how an executor can sell estate
assets during the course of probate:
"All applications for ex parte orders must contain a list of all
requests for special notice which have been filed in the proceedings
or contain an allegation that no special notice has been requested. If
such notice has been requested, a waiver must accompany the
application. Further, the Court may require verbal notification to
affected parties prior to granting the order.
"Applications for ex parte orders must be accompanied by a separate
order complete in itself. It is not sufficient for such an order to
provide merely that the application has been granted, or that the sale
of property set forth in the petition has been approved.
"Since no testimony is taken in connection with ex parte petitions,
the application must contain sufficient facts to justify granting the
ex parte order. Orders dispensing with notice must be supported by a
declaration."
APPLICATIONS FOR EX PARTE ORDERS (California)
http://www.cc-courts.org/prules02.htm
Search terms used:
probate beneficiary sale "court approval"
If you find any of this to be unclear, please request Clarification.
I would appreciate it if you would hold off on rating my answer until
I have an opportunity to reply.
Sincerely,
richard-ga |
