When someone passes on, the family is often at a loss of what to do. Here is an outline and some tips to help guide the way after the funeral is done and the funeral director has obtained death certificates from the town. It is necessary to pull together two lists of all the assets. One list is assets owned solely by the deceased, without a joint owner or a beneficiary. The other list is property owned jointly with right of survivorship or that has a beneficiary named. Property automatically going to others does not go through probate, but is part of what is called the taxable estate. The word taxable raises everyone’s blood pressure, but the good news is the Connecticut inheritance tax exemption is $5.1 million in 2020, and the Federal is $11.2 million, so for all but the very wealthy, there is no inheritance tax.
