Getting Authorization to Work on a Probate Property

Why this matters

On an estate house, the person who hires you and the person who can legally authorize and pay for the work are often not the same, and you find out which one you had when the invoice goes unpaid or a sibling disputes the job. Ten minutes of the right questions before the first visit produces a record of who authorized the work, under what document, and how the estate will pay. That record is what gets an estate invoice paid, keeps you out of a family dispute, and answers the question later if anyone asks why you did what you did.

The vocabulary (executor, administrator, letters, successor trustee) and how estate houses and estate money behave are covered in the reference card. See related: Estate and Probate Homes. This article is the intake procedure. Each step fills one line of an authorization record you keep in the job file.

This is not legal advice. Every authority question below is answered by your state's probate law, and the step that says when to stop and call an attorney is not optional.

Step 1: Record who is calling and what role they claim

Ask, and write down, the caller's name, their relationship to the decedent, and what they believe their role is: personal representative (executor or administrator), successor trustee, heir, the listing agent, or the estate's attorney.

Why first: the role decides every other question. An heir, however close, cannot authorize planned work. An agent can coordinate access but does not own the decision. An attorney's office calling on behalf of the representative is the cleanest call you will get.

What breaks if you skip it: you quote and schedule with the most organized sibling, who is not the representative, and the representative later declines to pay for work they never approved.

Step 2: Ask for the authority document by name

Ask for the specific document that gives the caller authority, using its name:

• Letters testamentary or letters of administration, issued by the probate court to a personal representative.
• A certification of trust or the relevant pages of the trust, for a successor trustee of a house titled to a living trust.
• A small-estate affidavit or court order, where your state lets real property pass that way.
• A court order specifically authorizing the work, where the representative's powers require one.

If the caller offers a power of attorney, explain kindly that a power of attorney ends when the person who granted it dies, so it no longer authorizes anything for the house. Families often do not know this, and saying it plainly saves them a wasted week.

If the caller has a will but no letters, the court has not yet appointed anyone. Planned work waits. Emergency work to protect the property, such as stopping a leak or restoring heat to prevent freezing, can be done at the caller's personal request and on their personal account, written that way on the work order. See related: Estate and Probate Homes.

What breaks if you skip it: "I'm the executor" is a claim. The document is the authority.

Step 3: Read the document before you rely on it

Ask for a copy, by email or in person, and check five things:

1. The court and case number. Letters come from a probate or surrogate's court, with a case or file number.
2. The name matches the caller. Not a sibling, not a spouse.
3. The date, and any expiry. Some courts' letters, or the certified copies institutions accept, carry a date that matters; banks commonly want a recently certified copy. You are not a bank, but a copy dated a year ago is a reason to ask whether anything has changed.
4. Any restriction written on it. Letters sometimes state limits, such as "limited authority" or "no sale or encumbrance of real property without court order." Read the whole document, including the small print.
5. The seal or certification, where the court applies one.

Where the court publishes its docket online, look up the case number to confirm the representative is still serving. A representative can be removed or replaced, and the docket shows it.

Why this step: a document you have read is evidence you relied on it in good faith. A document you were told about is not.

Step 4: Confirm the work is within their power

Ask the representative, or better, their attorney: does a repair of this size need court approval? In some states and some kinds of administration, a personal representative can contract for reasonable repairs without asking the court. In supervised administration, or under limited forms of independent authority, significant spending may need a court order first. Texas's independent administration and California's full authority under its Independent Administration of Estates Act sit at the freer end; supervised administration in other states sits at the other. The representative's attorney will know in a sentence.

A cleanout, an emergency repair and a full kitchen renovation are different questions. Ask about the scope you are actually quoting.

This is where you stop and route to a professional if any of the following is true: the letters carry a restriction that seems to cover your work; the representative is unsure whether they need court approval; a will contest or a dispute between family members has been mentioned; or the representative asks you to start planned work before letters are issued. Do not resolve these yourself. Ask the representative to have their attorney confirm in writing, and walk into that conversation with the letters, your written scope and your price.

Step 5: Name the contracting party correctly

Write the contract to the estate, signed by the representative in that capacity: "Estate of [decedent's name], by [representative's name], Personal Representative." For a trust: "[Trust name], by [name], Successor Trustee."

If there are co-representatives, ask whether either can sign alone. Some states and some appointments require both; when in doubt, have both sign.

If a relative wants to pay personally instead of through the estate, they sign as themselves and are your customer for that invoice. Do not mix the two on one contract.

What breaks if you skip it: a contract signed by "Jim" with no capacity stated can leave it unclear whether Jim or the estate owes you, which is exactly the argument nobody wants when the estate is short of cash.

Step 6: Settle how and when the estate pays

Ask three questions and write the answers on the contract:

1. From what account? The best answer is an estate account in the estate's name. A personal check from the representative is acceptable if they are contracting personally or will be reimbursed; know which.
2. When? Estates are often cash-poor until the house sells. If payment is "at closing," that is months and depends on a sale. A deposit for materials and payment on completion from the estate account is a reasonable standard ask; whether to accept payment at sale is a business decision that depends on the size of the job and how far along the estate is.
3. Who to send the invoice to? Often the estate's attorney's office handles payment. Get the address.

What breaks if you skip it: the invoice goes to the house, which nobody lives in, and sits in a mailbox for six weeks.

Step 7: File the record and decide who sees it

Put the authority document, the contract and the payment terms in the job file, tied to the property. Note in the file who is entitled to your findings: the representative, and anyone they designate in writing. Other family members who call get a polite redirect to the representative.

Why: in an estate dispute, the trade's photos and findings become evidence for one side. You keep out of it by sending everything to one person.

The completed record, from a real-shaped case

A roofing shop got a call from the listing agent for an estate house with a leaking roof valley. The agent put them in touch with the decedent's niece, who said she was the executor. The completed record:

The one line that changed the job. On the visit, the crew found the valley leak had rotted part of the decking, which pushed the scope from a valley repair to a section of redecking and reroofing, about three times the original estimate. The shop paused, sent the revised scope to the niece and the attorney, and asked whether the larger scope was still within her powers. The attorney replied the same day that it was. The written approval went into the file before the crew returned.

What would have changed the record. Had the letters been issued with limited authority, or in a state with supervised administration, the attorney's answer on the larger scope might have been that a court order was needed, and the crew would have tarped the roof as an emergency measure and waited. Had the niece offered only a copy of the will, the first line would have stopped the intake there: emergency tarp at her personal request and expense, planned work after letters.

How to tell the record did its job

When the invoice is paid from the estate account inside the stated window, without anyone asking who approved the work, the record worked. If a payment is held up and the first question anyone asks is "who told you to do that," the answer should be on one line of the table, with a document behind it. If it is not, the gap is in whichever step produced that line.

References

• Your state's probate code, for the powers of a personal representative and when court approval is required
• California Probate Code, Independent Administration of Estates Act, and Texas Estates Code, independent administration, as examples of how that authority varies
• Your local probate court's online docket, where available, for confirming an appointment
• See related: Estate and Probate Homes
• See related: The Real-Estate Job Intake SOP