Probate (I have the case information just stuck on validating)

[Nephtalie Pierre]

Hello :),

So last week I took two days off to gather probate info at the courthouse. The good thing was I could gather case information on  3 counties at the courthouse I went to ( I was able to gather about 48-50 leads).  Everything was online so I gathered all the information that I needed from the Petition for Estate Admin pdf. I was able to gather the case number, decedent name, DOD. PR, PR contact info, lawyer, and verified that they had real property.  The not so good news is that the petition for estate admin only listed the real estate property that the decedent owned if the PR was requesting a waiver of administration. For NH you can search property information on the city assessor's website. The thing is even if someone is noted on the application the decedent was a resident of a city in NH, doesn't necessarily mean the property they owned was in that city. I was told to only mail out to the PR if the decedent name is on the property and not to mail out if the property got transferred to a surviving spouse.  So I'm not sure how to validate the lead before mailing out because the application for most of the leads I got don't list the property so I'm not sure which city assessor site to search the owner information on.  Am I going at this the wrong way? Should I look into a service that allows me to do a property search and not focus on the city assessor site for the information? Any other tips or advice is appreciated!

Thank you :),

Neph

[Renee Harris]

Hi Neph,

I would try to connect with a title company and get access to do searches. For letting you use the service you can promise to use them when you get deals. 

Out here (los angeles) the petition tells if they had a house or at least where they lived when they died. Are you sure the petition does not have all that info? For me, I have a harder time getting the PRs info. 

Out here we have a probate dept at the courthouse, I would ask the clerk for help. Just any clerk will not know, but a probate clerk would know. If not, stop by one of the (probate) courtrooms while they are not in session and ask the clerk inside the courtroom on which paperwork you can find info about whether the decedent owned property. You can say "a family member died and my mom wants to know if they owned property, what document would I find that on?"

Hope this helps.