I've been getting packets in the mail to settle my mom's estate. She had some accounts with some brokerage firms, mostly money market accounts where she put the residuals from insurance my dad left her when he passed.

What's weird is that I got one from Meryl Lynch for her account, but then I got a second packet from them on Saturday. At first I thought it was a follow-up from the first but it was another new packet. This one, however, says that a woman (not my mom) has named me as her beneficiary and that to get the proceeds I need to send them a copy of the death certificate along with the completed form. I have no idea who this woman was or how much money we're talking about. Another odd thing is that this woman supposedly named me as the beneficiary where as my mom did not name any beneficiary (she just left everything to her estate to be divided) so it's a whole different set of forms. Very strange!

Now my cynical and pessimistic side is not getting excited. Occam's Razor would say this is just a mistake and when I call today I will be told by Tiffany or Biff with customer service that it was a computer error and to disregard the letter. BUT it would be cool if this is actually real and some long lost relative or family friend left me some money. We'll see.....

I've been slowly winding my way through the process of settling my mom's estate. I was named the executor finally and have been getting all the paperwork done for liquidating the various accounts. My parents had some stocks and 401K type accounts. The biggest item is the house and my wonderful sister has helped by getting the house painted and new carpets put in. My brother has been the one to deal with the real estate woman since he's had to buy and sell something like 6 or 7 houses with his job over the past years.

The estate sale went very well and after the estate sale folks took their cut, we still got something like $6500 to split three ways.

I went today to open an account for the estate. I wanted a separate checking account that I could deposit the money that would come from the estate accounts. I already have my checking at Chase and Robert and I went there today to try and open the new account. So I brought the letter from the court naming me executor,the death certificate, etc. The very hot and buff guy working in the was very nice, but we could tell he'd not done this before. Everything went well until he asked for the tax I.D. for the estate.....huh? Long story short (too late), the lawyers hadn't told us about needing a tax I.D. and when the bank contacted them they said they would start the paperwork to get the tax I.D. number.....geez.

This wouldn't be so big a deal except that my mom got her last check from my dad's pension a couple of days before she died and it's only good for 180 days so we only have about a week before this $700 check will presumably expire. So tomorrow Robert's going to call the bank and ask them if there's any way to deposit this check into my current account so it won't expire. If that fails he's going to try calling the company issuing the check and let them know that we've not yet deposited the check due to my mom's death and see if they'll either extend the date on the check or re-issue it to the estate. I'm not sure if ANY of these options will be legal/possible, but I'd sure hate to lose that money. My sister can use every penny being a single mom. Anyway, I'm hoping one of these will work out!