<prompt> Human: Edit: Thank you guys so much! You guys answered perfectly!  <response>: In Florida, where my parents lived it works like this: Source, I just did this for my parentsIf the home has been declared a homestead, it is handled out side of the estate - per the will, we split it between the 4 kids.If there is life insurance money, it is handled out side of the estate, generally because some human is named and the estate is not named.If there is retirement money 401K, IRA, etc it too is handled out side of the estate again, for the same basic reasons.All of the assets of the estate are valued by some means, it must be what a reasonable person would expect, a NEW car does not have a 1 value, you might use the kelly blue book or something like that. Generally personal effects have ZERO value TV, furniture, household goods, etc, family memories.Jewelry, watches, things things might have value that fall into the assets category.You add all of this value up and you come to some figure, you might sell some things, you might not, this is the job of the executor, or personal representative that was meYou get a list of claims against the estate, credit cards, car loans, electric bill, phone bills, etc. Most importantly you do not pay these, you pay nothing until the court tells you to pay, and what to pay.Some debt is considered secured credit - a car loan is normally secured because of the lien on the title, but sometimes your parents may have purchased the car with an unsecured loan, always check ie: your parents may have used a line of credit or something elseYou now have the assets of the estate a DOLLAR value, and claims against the estate a DOLLAR value.There is a specific order of who gets their money first, it varies from state to stateFlorida, it is Title 42, Chapter 733.707 Order of payment of expenses and obligations Probate Class 1 the court, the personal representative, the lawyers - The personal representative means: Your phone calls, if you need to fly across country to clean the house, or sell things, or need to hire some one to do that for you - these are all personal representative claims. Class 2 the funeral home Class 3 Debt and TaxesThere is some logic to the above The court MUST be able to manage the process - so they are at the top. Somebody has to do this work the executor so they are second. The lawyers - they come next you really need them - you dont know the details, or the steps and procedures, most probate lawyers have a fixed fee deal. The one I used was very good, and that is 90 of her work. Last: Bills like Taxes, credit cards, electric bills, phone bills, cellphone contracts, all of that sort of stuff.In the USA - Under no circumstances should anybody accept the bill as theirs, you are not obligated. I think the reasoning is: The corruption of blood - I may be very wrong. When I signed things for the estate, I always added: as personal representative for the estate of, provided I was doing things in good faith this protected me legally from many thingsAs others have said some debt holders are evil. Specifically, I will name names.I recall Discover card telling me Wow your father has some great credit history built on his card, would you like to take that on and gain his good credit? Yea, they did exactly that. I told them no.Others like Visa, JC_Pennies, etc - said No problem they forgive the debt upon death, I just had to send them a photo copy of the certificate, or wait 180 days so they could look it up via the Social Security death notices system, very helpful talked to one person - and only that one person, no phone tag. My personal pet peeve is Toyota Finance, aka: Omni-Finance of Florida - I will never purchase anything from Toyota as long as I live. My father leased a car, had it for about 2 years, we contacted them within days made arrangements for them to accept the car via the original dealer, as soon as we could about 2 weeks, we used the car to drive to the funeral, duh... returned it to the dealer and turned in the keys - it sat for several months, and they continued to demand payment as if we still had the car, claimed to be required to sell it at auction, then came after the estate for over 2500. IMHO - evil. Private message me with a verifiable Toyota email address and I will provide you with the exact details if you want to correct this nastiness.I use Toyota an example of something that is partly secured - Toyota got a good portion of the money via taking the car, but that was not enough money. That left over portion is considered an unsecured debt. Thus they had a Class 3 claim against the estate.The judge chooses how much, or how many pennies on the dollar the creditors can get.Again, this was my experience - they where in Florida, Im in California - its taken about 2 years for the estate to settle. 