Estate administration is the whole job: the court-supervised probate piece plus every asset that passes outside it. Sean Quinlan, Esq. handles both halves together, from the Camp Hill office and across Pennsylvania, so nothing gets missed between the Register of Wills file and the retirement plan administrator.
How this differs from probate administration
Probate administration is the narrow, court-supervised piece: proving the will with the Register of Wills, taking letters, advertising, filing the inventory under 20 Pa.C.S. § 3301, and closing the estate under the Orphans' Court's oversight. Our probate administration page walks through that process step by step.
Estate administration is the umbrella. It includes probate, and it also covers everything that transfers by contract or by operation of law — retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, TOD and POD accounts, tenancy by the entireties real estate, and assets already held in a revocable trust. In many Pennsylvania estates, that non-probate side is the larger share of the value.
Non-probate assets and who actually controls them
Retirement accounts pass to the named beneficiary under the plan document, not the will. Post-SECURE Act, most non-spouse beneficiaries face a ten-year payout window, and the elections made in the first year drive the income tax result for a decade. A spouse has rollover options no one else has.
Life insurance paid to a named beneficiary is exempt from Pennsylvania inheritance tax. Paid to the estate — because no beneficiary was named or the named beneficiary predeceased — it becomes a probate asset and is taxable. Checking this early sometimes changes the entire administration.
Jointly held property passes to the survivor immediately. Between spouses, tenancy by the entireties transfers with no Pennsylvania inheritance tax. With a non-spouse joint owner, the decedent's fractional interest is still reportable and taxable, and joint accounts created within one year of death are generally pulled back into the taxable estate in full.
Trust assets pass under the trust instrument. The successor trustee has duties that parallel the executor's — notice to beneficiaries, an accounting, and reporting the trust assets on the inheritance tax return — but none of it runs through the Register of Wills.
Where the two sides have to be coordinated
The Pennsylvania inheritance tax return is the seam. The REV-1500 reports probate and non-probate transfers alike, on separate schedules, and one filing covers both. The personal representative signs it even for assets they never controlled, which means the executor needs information from the trustee and the beneficiaries to file accurately.
Apportionment is the other pressure point. If the will is silent, Pennsylvania apportions inheritance tax among the transfers that generated it — so a beneficiary who received a non-probate account can owe tax that the estate is not obligated to pay for them. We sort that out in writing before money moves.
Debts and expenses are paid from probate assets. When the probate estate is thin and the non-probate side is rich, an executor can be left administering an estate with obligations and no cash. There are fixes, but they require early planning.
What full administration looks like
We start with a complete asset schedule: how every account is titled, who is named as beneficiary, and which bucket each item falls into. From there we run the probate track and the non-probate track in parallel — letters and advertising on one side, claim forms, beneficiary elections, and rollovers on the other — and file one coordinated inheritance tax return.
The engagement ends when the probate estate is closed with signed releases, the non-probate transfers are documented, the final fiduciary income tax returns are filed, and the family has a written record of what went where.