Inheritance D.A.Davidson

Question

My mother recently passed leaving my two sisters and I to split the estate equally. I am in US and my mother lived in Oregon when she died. My sister is the executor and I don’t really get along with her nor do I necessarily trust her but I’m trying. The assets were sold and placed in Ladder CD leaving some to pay expense while my mother was alive. Her assets were managed using D.A.Davidson account. I recently asked her for the accounting for the D.ADavidson account, which I received but it only went back one month when the account was first opened. My sister says that she had to close the previous account and open a new account to replace my mothers SocialSecurity# with a TaxID#, because of her passing. Does this sound right? I didn’t understand why that would be necessary being that she has access enough that she was allowed to close the account no problem, which I might add, in a sense erased all transactions from the report I saw. What I’m asking is this normal or should I be concerned? If it’s not normal what should I do, taking in account I’m trying not to jump to conclusions which may blow up our relationship. Unless it’s necessary?

Answer 1

This is normal: the executor is supposed to create estate accounts, rather than pretending to be the deceased (e.g. writing checks on the deceased's account, signing as the deceased), and it is reasonably likely that a bank would insist on this. The nature of this DA Davidson account is not clear (is there no estate checking account from which expenses can be paid; or is this the estate checking account), but the principle is that estate funds should go into an estate account, and not a personal account.