[WSBAPT] DOR refund question

[Kate Szurek]

I am helping a client administer an estate which is governed by decedent's revocable living trust.  Estate tax was due.  We filed for an extension of time to file and the trust paid estimated tax.  Many deductions later, we filed a timely return and sought a refund.  Some negotiation took place with an estate tax examiner, following which the refund which was granted and issued.

The problem is that the refund check was made payable to the "Estate of [Decedent]."  Not surprisingly, none of the banks the trustee works with (where the decedent or her trust had accounts) will accept the check, since it is payable to the estate and not the trust.

Estate tax examiner has given us two options:  1)  file a probate, open an estate account, and deposit the refund check, or 2)  complete an affidavit requesting the refund check be reissued to another payee (in this case, the trustee) with all beneficiaries of the estate signing.

Given one of the primary "benefits" of using a trust is purportedly to avoid probate, I am resisting the probate solution - though will do so if necessary.

We have diverse and not particularly cooperative beneficiaries to the trust (and just to make it a bit harder, signatures must be notarized), so that solution is also not attractive.

Perhaps the solution lies in who is the beneficiary to the "estate."  Under the Will (filed with the county and included with the tax return), the beneficiary is the trust.

Has anyone else run into this problem?  And if so, how was the problem solved?

Or perhaps some one or more of you has ideas.

Deeply grateful for the wisdom within our estate planning bar . . .

Kate

Kate Szurek, J.D., LL.M. (in Taxation)
kate at skagitlaw.com<mailto:kate at skagitlaw.com>

[SkagitLaw_Signature (2)]
Skagit Law Group, PLLC
P.O. Box 336 / 227 Freeway Drive, Suite B
Mount Vernon, WA  98273
360.336.1000
360.336.6690 (fax)
http://www.skagitlaw.com<http://www.skagitlaw.com/>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/wsbapt/attachments/20260825/52d3f620/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 8009 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/wsbapt/attachments/20260825/52d3f620/image001.jpg>