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Friday, January 23, 2009

Ind. Courts - New probate case number classification added 1/1/09

Rule 8 of the Administrative Rules lists all of abbreviations which are available for court cases. In the probate area:

ES – Estate, Supervised

EU – Estate, Unsupervised

EM – Estate, Miscellaneous

GU – Guardianship

TR – Trust

The EM classification is new, as of Jan. 1, 2009. Jeff R. Hawkins, HAWKINS LAW PC, Estate, Trust & Business Attorneys, Sullivan, Indiana, writes:
Rule 8 of the Indiana Administrative Rules added the EM case number classification on January 1. It was intended to provide a classification for proceedings concerning decedents that do not require the appointment of a personal representative. It may be desirable to introduce the EM classification to probate judges and clerks.

The idea is that separating matters like spreading a will of record or filing an inheritance tax return for a non-probate estate from traditional probate court proceedings should help streamline the court's docket as creditors learn that EM means there is no estate. When a creditor sees an EM classification, the creditor should know that it must cause an estate to be opened before filing a claim. Previously, the ES and EU classifications duped creditors into false hope that their claims were filed in an estate and they missed their deadlines.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 23, 2009 10:02 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts