Someone you love has died. You don't know what comes next.
Start here.
Before you hire anyone, before you sign anything, before you panic about probate, spend an hour with an attorney who will tell you, honestly, what you actually need to do. Sometimes the answer is "quite a bit." Sometimes the answer is "less than you think." Either way, you'll leave knowing.
$600. One hour. In person or by video.
The first hour is the hardest. We'll spend it with you.
When someone close to you dies, you get handed a pile of paperwork and a vague sense that you're supposed to "handle things." Nobody tells you what "things" are. Nobody tells you in what order. And the people trying to help, well-meaning family, the funeral home, a neighbor who went through this once, each have a different piece of the story.
The After-Loss Consultation is a single, focused hour with an attorney whose only job that hour is to sort out what applies to you.
What we cover
- What you're actually dealing with: probate, trust administration, neither, or some of both
- What has to happen in the next 30 days, and what can wait
- Which assets have a problem and which don't (the car title, the house, the retirement account, the joint bank account; they each have different rules)
- Who has authority to do what, and what paperwork you'll need to prove it
- Whether you need to hire a lawyer, and if so, for which parts
- Your questions, as many as we can get through in the hour
What you leave with
A clearer picture of your situation and a sense of what comes next. If you need to hire us for follow-on work, we'll tell you what that looks like and what it costs. If you don't, we'll tell you that too.
What it costs
$600, flat. Paid at scheduling. No hourly meter. No surprise invoice afterward.
Who this is for
- You just lost a spouse, a parent, or someone whose affairs you're now responsible for
- You've been named executor or trustee and have no idea what that means in practice
- You're not sure whether what you're facing requires a lawyer at all
You got the job. Nobody gave you the manual.
Maybe the will named you. Maybe the trust named you. Or maybe nobody named anyone, and you're the one dealing with it because somebody has to and there's no one else.
However you got here, the job is real. The law gives personal representatives genuine authority and genuine responsibility. What almost nobody explains ahead of time is how much of it is actually your call. You aren't a professional. You aren't held to a professional standard. You're someone who experienced a loss and then got handed a job on top of it, with real discretion about how to carry it out.
Here's some of what the job involves:
- Understanding what the trust or will actually says (the plain-English version, not the legalese)
- Inventorying assets and debts
- Communicating with beneficiaries, including the ones who are going to be difficult
- Meeting court deadlines and tax deadlines you may not know exist
- Keeping records good enough to survive a challenge later
The After-Loss Consultation is the right starting point for trustees, executors, and "I guess it's me" folks too. Bring whatever documents exist. We'll go over the ones that matter, figure out what the job actually looks like in your situation, and help you decide which parts you can handle yourself and which parts are worth hiring help for.
Probate, plainly
Probate is the court-supervised process of moving things that belonged to someone who died over to the people who get them now. That's it. It exists because the title to a car, the deed to a house, and the balance in a bank account don't update themselves when someone dies; somebody with legal authority has to do it, and the court's job is to make sure the right somebody is doing it.
In Colorado, a straightforward probate usually moves through four phases:
Open the case
Someone files a petition, the court appoints a personal representative, and the process officially starts.
Notify heirs and creditors
The people who might be owed something, and the people who might inherit something, get told the case is open.
Pay debts and taxes
Before anyone inherits anything, the estate settles what it owes.
Distribute what's left
Remaining assets go to heirs, either as the will directs or, if there's no will, as Colorado law directs.
Most Colorado probates take six to twelve months. Some take longer. How complicated the process gets depends less on the size of the estate than on how clear-cut the situation is. A clean will with no disputes looks very different from a missing will, an unclear one, or a family that can't agree.
Not every death requires probate. If assets were held in a trust, titled in joint tenancy, or had beneficiary designations in place, probate may not be necessary at all. Part of the After-Loss Consultation is figuring out which category your situation falls into. And if you want more detail on the process itself, our probate and trust administration page goes deeper.
Trust administration is not probate. It's its own thing.
When someone dies with a properly funded revocable living trust, the assets in the trust don't go through probate. Keeping the estate out of court is one of the main reasons people set trusts up in the first place, along with privacy, continuity of management if the grantor becomes incapacitated, and more control over how and when beneficiaries actually receive what's left to them.
"Doesn't go through probate" is not the same as "takes care of itself."
Trust administration has its own rules, its own deadlines, its own tax filings, and its own potential for conflict among beneficiaries. The successor trustee, often a spouse, adult child, or close family member, has real legal duties and real liability if those duties aren't met.
Trust accounting
Trust accounting is its own discipline, separate from tax accounting and separate from business accounting. It follows different rules and tracks different things, including how income and principal are allocated between beneficiaries. The formal report a trustee provides to beneficiaries isn't a profit-and-loss statement or a balance sheet; those formats tell a different story. If you've kept books before, that experience doesn't necessarily translate here.
Common situations we see:
- A trust was created but never fully funded, so some assets are in the trust and some aren't. Those require two separate processes.
- The trustee doesn't understand what the trust actually says, and is operating on a family member's interpretation.
- The trust was drafted years ago and the people named in it are no longer the right people.
The After-Loss Consultation is the right first step here too. Bring the trust document if you have it. We'll cover the provisions that matter for the first ninety days and tell you what needs to happen next.
Common questions
Do I actually need a lawyer for this?
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Colorado allows a personal representative to handle probate without an attorney, and for genuinely simple estates that can work. For anything involving real estate, business interests, out-of-state property, blended families, or meaningful debts, an attorney usually saves more than the fee. Part of what you're paying for in the After-Loss Consultation is a straight answer to this question.
What should I bring to the Consultation?
Whatever you have. A death certificate if you've received one. The will or trust if you can find it. A rough list of what the deceased owned and where. Don't delay scheduling because you don't have everything; plenty of our After-Loss clients show up with nothing but questions, and the hour is still useful.
How long does probate take in Colorado?
Six to twelve months for a straightforward case. Longer if the estate is complex, if there are disputes among heirs, or if debts and taxes take time to resolve.
How much does probate cost?
It varies. Court fees are modest. Attorney fees depend on the estate's complexity and the scope of work. Straightforward probates run a few thousand dollars; contested or complicated ones cost more. The Consultation will give you a realistic range for your specific situation.
Can I avoid probate with a trust?
Usually, yes, if the trust was properly funded before death. Assets titled in the trust's name, or passing by beneficiary designation, don't go through probate. Assets that were overlooked do.
What happens if there's no will?
Colorado's intestacy statute decides who inherits. For married people with children from the same marriage, it usually works out close to what most people would have chosen. For blended families, unmarried partners, or estranged relatives, the statute can produce results the deceased would not have wanted.
One hour. $600. A clear next step.
You don't have to figure this out alone, and you don't have to commit to anything beyond the hour. Schedule the Consultation, show up with your questions, and leave with a plan.