Darren Findling of The Probate Pro discusses the informal probate process and the Application for Informal Probate and Appointment of Personal Representative.

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This video is for educational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice. The Probate Pro, PLC, QuietTitle.com and any other entities of The Darren Findling Law Firm, PLC do not claim to be an “expert” or “specialist” in their legal practice areas.

Ready to open a probate estate? Hi, I'm Darren Findling of The Probate Pro and we're going to examine SCAO Form pc558, the Application for Informal Probate and appointment of personal representative. This form, scao for state court administrative office, PC for probate court form 558 is readily obtainable. And you can contact my office and we'd be happy to give it to you free of charge. Now understand this form is used to begin a probate process. It is an informal probate process as compared to a formal proceeding with a petition for probate. So you have to really carefully understand when you'd want to use an informal administration versus a formal appointment of a personal representative. There are significant impacts by virtue of proceeding through an informal administration versus a formal administration. So understanding the difference is really the first step before starting and embarking down this path of an informal probate the application for informal probate is guided and created by various statutes and court rules as reflected by the floating yellow arrow in the bottom right corner these statutes and court rules are complicated so please read through them and work with a skilled competent probate lawyer who understands how to navigate through the probate process also understand that this is just step one of a multi-step process a multi-month sometimes year long or years-long process of probate administration we urge you to work with a lawyer because navigating through this process is not intuitive there's no rule book or guidebook that will show you each step of the way the court staff can't help you through the process so work with an attorney to be assured that you understand each step of this process now there are many videos that i've put together explaining the probate process the timeline and so on you can use these to give yourself a better understanding of the probate process but don't rely on them solely work with a lawyer let's work our way through the particular form this application for informal probate is started by completing the county in the top left corner in the blue rectangle that identifies the county upon which the individual who died was domiciled now the word domicile is a little odd for some people because most people think of residency but domicile has a particular meaning under michigan's probate statutes so understand when domicile or how to define the term domicile probate can also occur in the county in which an asset exists in the event that the person died out of the state of michigan in the top right corner there's going to be a file number now you'd think that you'd have to put something here but this is actually left blank because the court is going to give a case number a file number when you fill out this particular application for informal probate as you can see from the title it's an application for informal probate and or the appointment of a personal representative test date intestate what that means is with a will or without a will now you can open the estate you can appoint a pr you can submit a will you can proceed in testing these are all decisions that are being made at the commencement of this informal proceeding the idea of informal probate is that generally this is used this path is used when the family is in harmony everyone is getting along well there are no issues that would need to be litigated there's no disputes over the will there are no disputes over determination of errors there's no fighting or dispute resolution that needs to occur now we understand that even though you start informally you can proceed to a supervised administration and a formal process but this informal process is really designed for minimal court intervention so the idea is that although you are filing and presenting things through the probate court during the probate administration the court really is