What types of property require an Oklahoma probate?

In this blog post, I talked about what types of property are Oklahoma probate property.  Below are some scenarios in which you might need to do Oklahoma probate:
 

->Mineral Interests.
A person dies owning an Oklahoma mineral interest, but the interest is not held in a trust, and the title is solely in the name of the person who dies.  Many times, the operator of the oil and gas well will not continue to pay royalties without an order from the Oklahoma probate court specifying who the heirs are.  For example, a person lives in Texas but inherited a mineral interest from a parent in Garvin County, Oklahoma.  The title to that mineral interest will need to be changed from the person’s parent to the person.

–>Life insurance
A person dies leaving a life insurance policy with beneficiaries who are no longer living;

—>Not transferred to Trust.
Consider, a person who *has* a living trust dies, but that person never transferred their property to the trust.  For example, the person owned their home but did not change the title to the home to make the trust the owner of the home.  That failure to change the title to the home likely means the person’s heirs will need to do an Oklahoma probate to change the title to the home.  The process of transferring legal title to your property to your Oklahoma living trust is known “funding”, funding is critical and you can more about it here;

—->Accounts with no beneficiary
Typically, with retirement accounts, investment accounts and many times on bank accounts, there is the opportunity to name a beneficiary.  The beneficiary is the person or people who automatically receive the proceeds of the account (with proof of death of the owner and proof of beneficiary identify of course).  If a person does not name at least one beneficiary on an account such as this, that usually means the account is going to probate.  Without probate, the company holding the account will not release it (there are two small exceptions to the general rule: Oklahoma small estate affidavit and Oklahoma affidavit of delivery of personal property); and

—–>Real Property
An unmarried person dies owning a house and title to the house is solely in the deceased person’s name; although other states provide a process where title to real property can be transferred by affidavit, I am not aware of any similar process in the state of Oklahoma. I believe that the only way to transfer title to real property, where the person who died is the sole owner of the real property, is to get an order from a judge transferring title, out of a probate case.

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."