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Hi, this is Keith Davidson from Albertson & Davidson.  In this video, we’re discussing how do you get your inheritance?  And that really depends on what your inheritance consists of.

If you are the beneficiary of a trust, then you should be able to go to the trustee and get your inheritance from the trustee.  If that doesn’t work, the trustee’s not making distributions, then you may have to go to court.  But that would be the path to get your trust inheritance.

If you’re going to be receiving assets under a will, then the will has to go to probate.  That means somebody has to file a Petition with the court to open probate, get the Will admitted, appoint the executor and then you have to go through the probate process, which is a whole court process in California where the passage of assets is supervised by the court and eventually you’ll get your assets out of the probate process.

If what you’re receiving is a beneficiary designation type asset, like life insurance, then you’d have to go to the life insurance company. And you have to call them up and say I’m a beneficiary and they will send you some forms and they’ll usually work directly with you to get you the money that you deserve as a beneficiary.

If you’re a joint tenant either on real property or on a bank account, then you can just deal with the joint tenancy laws.  For real property, you would file a form and it’s called Affidavit – Death of Joint Tenant and that would put the world on notice once you record that form that the other joint tenant has now passed and you are the sole owner of the property as the surviving joint tenant.

If you’re talking about a bank account, then you just go to the bank, you’d explain to them what happened, take along a copy of the Death Certificate, and the bank will work with you to get the assets to you as a surviving joint tenant.

So the path that you take to receive your inheritance is not just one way.  It depends on the type of assets that you are supposed to be receiving.  You have to go to the source of each asset, and you have to get those assets from each source and that could be multiple locations, depending on the type of assets that somebody has when they pass away.