Q: How do you find how much is in your estate

A: It depends on whether you are concerned about your taxable estate, your probate estate or your non-probate estate. The answers are all usually quite different. In general, your taxable estate consists of everything you owned at the moment of your death plus things you gave away within three years prior to death plus other things you gave away at any time during your lifetime if you maintained certain kinds of controls over them.

In general your probate estate consists of things that are still titled in your name after your death but also including things that don't have titles such as most tangible personal property.

In general your non-probate estate consists of things that automatically transferred to someone else when you died such as property that was held in joint tenacy with right of survivorship or passed by death beneficiary designation. In some states creditors can force some categories of non-probate assets back into the probate estate to pay debts of the decedent.

A: Hello,

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. Are you wanting to know what in your own estate or the estate of a loved one who has passed away? If the loved one owned property that needs to be probated, the personal representative will have to file an inventory in the probate court letting the heirs know what is in the estate (assuming the heirs don't waive their right to an inventory). Hope his helps!