The job arrives in a specific order, and most of the order is set by statute rather than by anything you decide. A personal representative in Washington files the will, asks the court for authority, tells the people entitled to know, deals with creditors, pays what is owed in the sequence the law sets, and then closes the estate with a document that, if nobody objects, ends the appointment. Each of those stages has a real duration. Some of the waiting is the process working correctly, and some of it is a bank, an insurer, or a beneficiary not returning a call.
Filing the will and getting appointed
The original will goes to the superior court in the county where the decedent lived, and the petition for appointment usually goes in with it. In King County this is typically an ex parte matter, handled on paper or in a short hearing, and the order can issue within days of filing if the paperwork is clean. A careful reader looks at two things in the will before filing: whether it grants nonintervention powers, and whether it waives bond. Those two clauses determine whether the next year is a series of court appearances or a series of errands.
Bond is the security a representative posts against mishandling the estate. Where the will waives it, courts ordinarily honor the waiver, and where the will is silent or the petitioner is a nonresident, expect the question to be raised. Getting a bond written is not difficult, but it takes a week or two and it costs money every year the estate stays open, so it is worth reading the will closely rather than assuming. If bond is required and you want it waived, all the beneficiaries can sometimes consent, which is a phone-call problem rather than a legal one.
Letters testamentary and the notices that start clocks
Letters testamentary are the proof of authority, and nothing much happens without them. Banks, title companies, and brokerages will generally want a certified copy issued within the last sixty days, so order several at the outset and expect to order more later. Within twenty days of appointment, notice of the appointment and of the pendency of the probate goes to heirs and beneficiaries, with proof filed. Publishing notice to creditors is separate, runs once a week for three weeks in a qualifying newspaper, and starts a four month bar measured from the first publication date. Check that date and write it down, because the whole schedule hangs from it.
Reasonably ascertainable creditors also get mailed notice, and their period runs the later of four months from first publication or thirty days from mailing. That is why a careful representative reviews the mail, the last twelve months of bank statements, and the credit card and medical billing before deciding the list is complete. Without published notice, claims can surface for two years after death, which is the difference between closing an estate this year and carrying it. The inventory and appraisement is prepared within three months of appointment and delivered to anyone who requests it in writing, though in most nonintervention estates it is never filed with the court.
What nonintervention powers change day to day
An order of solvency and nonintervention powers means the representative sells the house, closes accounts, hires the accountant, and distributes without going back to a judge for permission. It does not remove the duties, only the supervision. The Internal Revenue Service still expects a final individual return for the year of death and, where the estate has income above the threshold, a fiduciary return, so an employer identification number is an early errand. A supervised estate, by contrast, means a motion and an order for meaningful acts, which adds weeks to every sale and every distribution. That single clause in the will is the largest variable in the calendar.
Paying claims, then closing
Claims are paid in statutory order: administration costs first, then funeral expenses, expenses of last illness, wages, taxes, and then general debts. Order matters only when the estate cannot pay everything, but the representative who pays a favorite creditor early in a thin estate is personally exposed, so the sequence is worth respecting from the start. Once the creditor period has closed, the tax returns are filed, and the assets are ready to move, the declaration of completion is filed and mailed to the beneficiaries. Thirty days pass with no objection and the appointment ends.
A realistic estate with a house to sell, no disputes, and responsive beneficiaries runs somewhere between nine months and a year and a half, and the creditor period and the sale are usually running at the same time rather than in sequence. The stages you cannot compress are short. What stretches is everything that depends on somebody else picking up the phone, which is why the first month of organized record-gathering pays for itself several times over.