My sister passed away a few months ago and my father is trying to pay her bills, but the bank did not honor the check written on the account to pay for her residential care. My sister was mentally retarded and a ward of the state of ca, where she lived. She received social security funds and state funds that were automatically deposited into a checking account that my father administered to pay her bills. Social Security deposited money in the account for the month that she passed away and they advised that they were going to take it back from the account to settle the matter, so we left the account in tact. It took the residential home some time to figure out how much money was owed so when they did so we sent them a check. As stated, the bank rejected the check saying to Refer to Maker. The bank informed us that we need to open an Estate Account and that we should go to an Accountant or a Lawyer.

Simply stated, the account has less than $6K (the entire value of her estate) in it and we owe about $2K to the residential care and the funeral ran about $3.5K.

Is this something that can be done by us without an attorney or accountant getting involved? There just simply is not an excess amount of money available to pay for professional services for such a small estate.

Can I simply call the IRS for an ID number?

I do not think that there were any tax returns filed in her name previously, will we need to file one now?

Thanks for any help you can offer us.

You are going to have to open an estate account, however you do not need a lawyer or an accountant, the bank can handle this. The banks are reuired to do this in case leins come in from the estate.