By Lauren Cooper
After her mother had passed away, Sharon and I met to discuss what needed to be done to settle her mother’s estate. We had previously worked with Mom, who was a widow, with the goal of protecting her children from the hassle and expense of probate. We established a Revocable Living Trust for Mom and during that process she had mentioned to us that she had a safety deposit box at her local bank. We advised her to go to the bank and have it re-titled into her Trust. When Mom went into the bank to do this, the bank teller told her it was unnecessary to retitle the safety deposit box because Sharon already had full access to the box. However, after Mom passed away, it became clear that what she had been told regarding her safety deposit box was misleading.
Mom’s real estate and bank accounts were all titled into her trust and were therefore immediately under the control of her appointed Successor Trustee, Sharon. Within a month of Mom’s death all of the bills were paid and the assets were ready to be distributed, however there was one thing that Sharon had not handled—the safety deposit box. When Sharon went to Mom’s bank, the teller informed her that she no longer had the ability to access the box because she had only been listed as Power of Attorney over the box. Unfortunately, the authority provided through a Power of Attorney ends at death.
The bank continued to refuse access to the safety deposit box by anyone but an Executor appointed by the Probate Court. Unfortunately, Sharon had no choice but to open a probate administration, which much to Sharon’s dismay would make everything in the box public record. Even with all of the heirs cooperating, it took over two months of submitting documentation to the Court before Sharon was appointed Executor and the bank let her remove all assets from the safety deposit box. At this point you must be wondering what was actually in this the safety deposit box. No it wasn’t gold, diamonds, or stock certificates. When Sharon went into the box, all that was there was one $50 bond that was worth around $35!
For the most part, our clients that require probate administrations of their estates never saw an Elder Law Attorney prior to their death to establish an estate plan. However, in this case, Mom’s one innocent mistake brought about by the short-sighted advice of an employee at her local bank caused her heirs several additional months of time and hundreds of dollars in Court costs.
Luckily, you can fix or avoid this problem easily as long as you are aware of what needs to happen and, in some cases, are persistent with your bank. Safety deposit boxes can usually be re-titled into a Revocable Living Trust, which would give the Successor Trustee immediate access to them. If you do not have a trust or if your bank does not allow for your trust to be the owner, then you should register your Successor Trustee as a co-owner of the box. If you have a safety deposit box, this simple measure will prevent the loss of time and money that our client’s heirs had to endure.
