On October 1, 2013, after completing the final accounting, it was time to get approval to close the estate. As mentioned in the article Closing the Estate: Complete the Final Accounting, the attorney would send assent forms along with the final Inventory of Assets and the Final Account to each beneficiary. If the beneficiaries approved of both documents, they would sign and return the assent form. Moreover, if all assent forms returned signed, this would allow me to start the closing process. Otherwise, any beneficiary wanting to contest the Final Account would notify the attorney of their intentions. So, sending the assent forms for approval from the beneficiaries was really a referendum on the estate administration. As a result, this was an anxious time for me as an executor. 

Mailing the Assent Forms to Close the Estate

The afternoon of October 1^st began the process of crafting the assent forms. On this afternoon, the attorney sent me a draft of the assent form for my approval. Since the assent form skillfully expressed the intent of the form, I quickly granted approval. The next day the attorney began mailing out the assent forms with the final Inventory of Assets and the Final Account to each beneficiary. At this moment, I felt like a politician waiting for election results. Only, instead of a vote tally, I was waiting for twenty signed assent forms to start closing the estate.

As the days went by, assent forms trickled in signed. Honestly, only one assent form concerned me and that was from the belligerent beneficiary. If there was a time to make one last pitch for more property, this was the time. After two weeks since sending the assent forms, there was still a missing form from the belligerent beneficiary. However, on October 23, 2013, the attorney sent me an email telling me that all the assent forms returned signed. Once I read that sentence in the email, I felt like a politician that won the election. The feeling of elation swept over me as the beneficiaries gave their approval to close the estate. 

The Final Tasks

In the same email the attorney sent me on October 23^rd, there was a list of the following tasks to begin the process of closing the estate:

1. The office of the Attorney General must receive the signed assent forms from the two charities. The attorney agreed to take on that task. 
2. The executor must sign the signature page of the Final Account. Since all beneficiaries signed the assent form, it wasn’t necessary to send the Final Account to the Massachusetts probate court. Therefore, the attorney advised me to keep the original documents in case the probate court asks for them. 
3. Complete the final distribution.

The attorney also instructed me to carry out the final distribution at any time. There was no need to hold up the distribution. So, over the next two days, I began sending checks to each beneficiary. After the checks cleared, only the estate reserve remained in the estate account.

Close the Estate?

After completing the final distribution, I emailed the attorney. At this point, confusion set in about the state of the estate. In the email, I asked bluntly if completing the final distribution closed the estate. In the reply email, the attorney informed me that the estate remains open until the estate account is empty. Moreover, the attorney listed the following tasks to close the estate permanently:

• Pay the final administrative expenses from the estate reserve.
• Distribute the remaining money from the estate reserve to each beneficiary.

After reading the final tasks, my heart stopped. The first task of making final payments to the professionals wasn’t a problem. However, running another distribution with so little money seemed like punishment. In addition, filing the estate income tax returns remained on the task list. So, the state of the estate, at this point, was that more work was necessary to close the estate.

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