What Should You Do When Someone Dies in Franklin City, Virginia?

Virginia requires an inventory of the estate's assets within 120 days of your appointment, and in a probate case it is filed with the Franklin City Circuit Court.Va. Code § 64.2-1300Verified Sep 15, 2026 You set the fair-market values yourself; no independent appraiser is required. Assets discovered later go on a supplemental inventory. The plan gives you a place to record each asset — its category, its value on the date of death, how that value was established, and whether it passes through probate or outside it — and totals the probate and non-probate columns separately as you go.

Before a bank will release anything, it wants proof you have authority over the estate: Letters Testamentary if there's a will, Letters of Administration if there isn't. You get them from the Franklin City Circuit Court by petitioning to open the estate and being appointed. The plan pre-fills the Virginia petition for probate and letters from what you've already entered — the decedent's details, the heirs, and a good-faith estimate of the probate property from your inventory — so you're editing a draft rather than starting one.

Every institution holding an account has its own death-claim process, and they differ more than people expect — different forms, different documents, different departments. The plan's directory covers 49 banks, credit unions, and insurers operating in Virginia plus 315 national institutions, and carries each one's claim process, the documents it asks for, and where to send them. Add the ones this estate actually holds and they become tasks on the timeline.

Virginia requires the estate's final account to go to the probate court for approval.Va. Code §§ 64.2-1206, 64.2-1304, 64.2-1212Verified Jul 11, 2026 The plan keeps the ledger behind that account: money into the estate, money out of it, and money to beneficiaries, each entry categorized the way an estate account is organized. It carries the running balance and a charge-and-discharge summary — what you took in against what you paid out and still hold — so the numbers are assembled before you fill in the form the court wants.

Creditors in Virginia have 6 months from the first publication of the creditor notice to bring a claim against the estate.Va. Code §§ 64.2-508.1, 64.2-528, 64.2-529, 64.2-550, 64.2-552, 64.2-556Verified Sep 15, 2026 Anything distributed before that window closes is still reachable by a creditor, which is the exposure most executors don't see coming. Enter the date the clock started and the plan works out when the window closes, then holds the distribution and final-accounting steps until it does.

More than most people order the first time. Each bank, insurer, and agency that closes an account generally wants its own certified copy, and Virginia charges $15 for the first one. The plan counts the copies this estate needs recipient by recipient — every institution, agency, and office on the plan, plus the Franklin City court — prices the order, and tracks which copies have gone out and which you still hold.