Settling an estate takes about 600 hours of an executor's own time, spread across 12 to 18 months. That is fifteen weeks of full-time work, done in 40-minute pieces while you are grieving and holding down a job. A simple estate with a will, two or three accounts, and no real property can come in closer to 150 hours over six to nine months. An estate with property in two states, a business interest, or an unhappy sibling can pass 1,000 hours and run for three years.

Almost none of those hours are interesting. They are hold music, notary appointments, forms that arrive by mail because the bank will not accept email, and the same certified death certificate sent four times to four departments. This post shows where the time actually goes, why the calendar refuses to move faster, and which parts of the job you can hand off.

Two clocks run at once

Executors get frustrated because they are watching the wrong clock.

Calendar time is how long from the death until the estate is closed and the heirs have their money. For most estates that is 12 to 18 months. The floor is set by things outside your control: the court's schedule, your state's creditor claim window, and the final tax return.

Your time is the 600 hours. This is the part you feel. It is also the only part anyone can shorten, because you cannot talk a probate court into a shorter creditor period, but you absolutely do not have to be the person calling Fidelity for the fifth time.

Our state-by-state probate timeline covers the calendar side in detail. This post is about the hours.

Where the 600 hours go

The split below is an estimate for a middle-of-the-road estate: a will, one house, six or seven financial accounts, a car, some credit cards, and no litigation.

• Death certificates and first notifications, 15 to 25 hours. Ordering certified copies, then working through everyone who has to be told: Social Security, the pension, the insurers, the employer, the utilities, the credit bureaus.
• Finding what the person owned, 40 to 80 hours. Reading two years of mail and bank statements for clues, calling institutions that may or may not have an account, checking every state's unclaimed property database. Most families find an account they did not know about, and most find it late.
• Opening probate, 60 to 120 hours. Locating the original will, filling in the petition and the inventory, tracking down heir addresses and signatures, filing, then waiting to be appointed and going back when the clerk rejects a form for a missing box.
• Closing accounts and filing claims, 150 to 250 hours. The biggest slice by far. Each institution has its own packet, its own notary rule, and its own idea of what counts as proof. One bank account alone runs 10 or more hours. Multiply by every bank, card, brokerage, 401(k), and life insurance policy.
• The house and the vehicles, 50 to 100 hours. Deed work, insurance changes, keeping the utilities on, cleaning out decades of belongings, retitling the car or selling it.
• Debts and creditors, 30 to 60 hours. Publishing notice, sorting real debts from junk collection letters, paying valid claims in the priority order your state requires.
• Tax returns, 20 to 40 hours. The final personal return, sometimes an estate income return, and the records your preparer will ask for.
• Accounting and distribution, 30 to 60 hours. Tracking every dollar for the court and the heirs, then getting the receipts and releases signed before you can close.

Add the midpoints and you land near 600. Every executor we talk to says the same thing about their own number: it was the volume of small tasks, not any single hard one.

Why 18 months, even when nobody is fighting

Four things set the floor on calendar time, and none of them care how organized you are.

The creditor claim period is the big one. Most states give creditors somewhere between three and eight months from the date notice is published to come forward, and a careful executor does not distribute the estate before that window closes. Distribute early and you can be personally on the hook for a claim that shows up later.

Court calendars add weeks at each step. Getting appointed can take four to twelve weeks depending on your county, and any hearing gets scheduled at the court's convenience.

Institutions move at their own pace. A bank might take three weeks to acknowledge a closure request. An insurer that puts the payout in a retained-asset account adds another round of paperwork.

Taxes come last. If the estate owes an income tax return, most executors hold a reserve and wait for the return to be accepted before the final distribution.

What pushes an estate past 1,000 hours

• Real property in a second state, which means a whole separate ancillary probate case with its own court and its own forms.
• No will, so heirs and shares are set by state statute and every one of them has to be identified and served.
• Missing records. When nobody knows where the accounts are, the search itself becomes the project.
• A contest, a disinherited child, or a co-executor who disagrees with you.
• A business, a rental, or an LLC interest that has to be valued, run, or wound down while the estate is open.

What actually shortens it

Some of this only helps before a death. Some of it helps right now.

Beneficiary designations do more than any other single thing. An account with a valid payable-on-death designation goes to the named person without probate, though the designations people forget to update cause their own trouble.

If the estate is small enough, your state's small estate affidavit can replace full probate entirely and cut months off the calendar.

Opening a proper estate bank account early keeps every check, refund, and closure payment in one place, which is most of what the final accounting requires.

Doing the asset search once, thoroughly, at the start. The expensive version of this job is the one where an account surfaces after you have already distributed and closed.

How Sunset removes most of the 600 hours

Sunset does the executor's paperwork for you, and it is free for families.

We search for what the person owned across banks, brokerages, retirement plans, insurance policies, and unclaimed property in all 50 states, so the discovery phase stops being a guessing game. We prepare the probate documents for your county, filled in and ready to sign. We open an FDIC-insured estate account for the money to land in. And with Automated Closure, you request a closure once and we finish the job: we notify the institution, send the documents, follow up until the account is actually closed, and deposit the funds.

More than 10,000 families have used Sunset. The 600 hours does not disappear, because banks and courts still move the way they move. What changes is who spends the hours.

FAQ

How long does it take to settle an estate with a will?

A will makes the process cleaner, not dramatically faster. Expect 12 to 18 months for a typical estate with a will, because the creditor claim period, the court's schedule, and the final tax return set the floor either way. What a valid will does is remove the fights about who is in charge and who inherits, which is where the truly long cases come from.

Can an estate be settled in six months?

Yes, in two situations. If the estate qualifies for a small estate procedure under your state's limit, it can finish in two to four months. If everything the person owned passed by beneficiary designation or joint ownership and there is nothing left to probate, it can be faster still. A normal probate estate almost never closes in six months, because most states will not let you distribute before the creditor window ends.

Why can't the executor distribute the money right away?

Because an executor who distributes early can be held personally responsible for debts, taxes, or claims that appear afterward. Creditors get a statutory window to come forward, taxes have to be settled, and the court expects an accounting before assets go out. Paying an heir in month two feels generous and can become your problem in month nine.

How long does an executor have to settle an estate?

Most states do not set a hard deadline, but they do impose a duty to act with reasonable diligence, and interested parties can petition the court if an executor sits on the job. Many states also require an inventory within 60 to 90 days of appointment and periodic accountings after that. If a year passes with no movement, expect an heir to file something.

Does every estate go through probate?

No. Assets with a living beneficiary, jointly owned property with survivorship rights, and anything held in a trust pass outside probate. Small estates can often use a simplified affidavit instead. Probate is for the property that has no other route to its new owner.

The hours are the product

An estate is not one hard task. It is 600 easy ones, arriving in the worst year of your life, each with its own form and its own hold queue.

Start with Sunset and we will take the paperwork side of it. Free for families, in all 50 states.