Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Alabama

Where to File Probate

Based on the facts you wrote, probably Alabama. However, you should seek the counsel of a competent AZ or AL attorney for accurate legal information.

This issue comes up in my practice in GA many times. Usually, the scenario is that an elderly individual lives in Atlanta, but goes somewhere else for treatment or for a temporary stay and while away from home -- dies. GA has recently enacted some new statutes to deal with this issue, but, generally -- for probate you look to the last legal domicle. It appears that your father's last legal residence was AL. Domicle is a really low test: residence + intent to stay for the indefinite future. However, other factors may determine the legal residence. The issue in your case is, did your father INTEND for AZ to become his permanent legal home forever? Did he take steps to change his mail, register to vote, get a driver's license, etc.? Probably not. It appears he only went there for medical care -- regardless whether he knew he may not be coming back.

If he considered AL to be his home and it appears to be his last legal residence, file there with a cert copy of the death cert from AZ. Also, this last statement may sound odd. If no real estate is involved and he had little or no money in checking accounts or otherwise, it really makes no practicle difference which state takes jurisdiction and closes a "no asset" estate.

Good Luck

Where is probate required?

Where are the assets located? And what are the nature of the assets? If your father was simply visiting with your brother in AZ, then AZ would not be the place to settle his estate; Mr. Woods has admirably addressed that issue in his response to you.

Depending upon the size of the estate and the nature of the assets, many states have administrative proceedings for small estates which are quicker than "regular" probate proceedings; you may wish to consult an attorney admitted in AL to guide you through this process, since it is state specific. You must be careful to pay all appropriate taxes, both federal and state, and file all appropriate tax returns.

And by all means, now that you can see what a difficulty is caused by dying intestate, be sure that you and your siblings write your own wills!

Good luck,

Where to file for probate

The answer will depend on whether your father changed his residency to Arizona or was simply visiting there. If he in fact intended to change his residency to Arizona, his Will and the estate should be administered from there. On the other hand, if he was still an Alabama domicilliary, then that should be the home state for his estate administration.

Intestate Probate for recently-moved deceased

You understand that I cannot give you legal advice except for my state (NC). But if the man had died here (NC), I would probably arrange to probate his estate here whether or not he had a will, so long as it could be reasonably sworn that he was indeed a resident of my state and there was no clear intent to return to the other state. In fact, I am in the process of probating a former Florida resident's estate here (NC) because she came "to die" here where her only child lives.