Most probates in King County move on a predictable clock: appointment within a few weeks of filing, a four-month creditor window opened by publication, then a long quiet stretch while assets are gathered, taxes are filed, and the house is sold. The stages that take time are known in advance, and the waiting is structural rather than anyone's fault. What derails the schedule is almost never volume of work. It is one of a short list of conditions, each of which converts a nonintervention administration into something slower, supervised, or adversarial. A careful reader checks for all six before deciding how much of this to handle alone.
The estate may not be able to pay everyone
Nonintervention powers, the mechanism that keeps a Washington personal representative out of court for most of the administration, depend on the estate being solvent. If the debts plausibly exceed the assets, the court will not grant those powers, and a representative who already has them is expected to tell the court when the picture changes. The signal usually arrives early: a reverse mortgage balance near the appraised value, medical bills from a final hospitalization, a credit card file thicker than the bank statements. Statutory priority then governs who gets paid, and paying a sympathetic creditor out of order can become the representative's personal liability.
There is real property outside Washington
A Washington probate reaches Washington land. A cabin in Idaho, a rental in Arizona, or inherited acreage in Montana generally requires an ancillary proceeding in that state, filed by counsel admitted there, which runs on that state's calendar and not on yours. Budget several months for the ancillary case to catch up to the main one, longer if the other state requires bond or supervised administration where Washington would not. The check worth making early is the deed itself, because a property held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship or by a trust may not need the second proceeding at all.
The will cannot be found, or someone disputes it
An original will that nobody can locate is not fatal, but proving a lost or destroyed will means overcoming a presumption that the testator revoked it, with testimony and copies and a hearing. That is months, not weeks. A will contest proper, alleging undue influence, incapacity, or improper execution, must be brought within four months of probate, which is why the first four months after admission are worth watching closely even when nobody has said anything. Signals include a document signed shortly before death, a beneficiary who arranged the drafting, or an earlier will that read very differently.
An heir will not sign, and TEDRA becomes the route
Plenty of ordinary steps run on consent: a receipt and waiver closing the estate, an agreement to distribute property in kind, a nonintervention grant in an intestate case. One sibling who stops returning calls can stall all of it indefinitely, and at that point the Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act is the tool. A TEDRA petition brings the question in front of a judge on notice, or into mediation, and produces a binding agreement or an order the title company will accept. Filed early, it is a scheduling device. Filed late, after positions harden, it is litigation.
A creditor claim arrives after you thought the window closed
Publication starts a four-month clock, but only for creditors who were actually notified or who are reasonably ascertainable and were mailed notice. Miss one, and that creditor's claim survives well past the point when the estate looks finished, up to the statutory outer limit measured from the date of death. The protective move is a documented search of the decedent's mail, bank records, and credit report before publication, then mailed notice to everyone found. The IRS sits outside this scheme entirely, with its own timelines for the final individual return and any fiduciary return, so those get their own calendar.
Where the line falls
Any one of the six is a reason to buy a consultation and a written opinion rather than a full representation. Two together, or any of them combined with a beneficiary already talking about a lawyer, is the point at which full representation costs less than the alternative, because the fees come out of the estate while a mistake in payment priority or a botched distribution comes out of the representative personally. The check is cheap and takes an afternoon: read the deeds, list the debts, mail the notices, confirm the will is the original.