What we are, and what we are not

We are not a law firm

Nobody here is acting as your attorney. We do not represent you, we cannot appear for you, and we cannot advise you about your own estate. Nothing you read here, and nothing you send us, creates an attorney and client relationship, and nothing you tell us is privileged.

Pennsylvania does not require an attorney to probate an estate, and plenty of people get through it without one. But there are situations where you want one, and we will tell you when we think you are in one of them: a contested will, a family that disagrees, a large or complicated estate, a business or a farm, a creditor claim you cannot evaluate, or an out of state property. Saying that costs us work and we say it anyway.

Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice

Every page on this site is general information about what Pennsylvania requires. It is not advice about your situation, because we do not know your situation, and information that is accurate in general can still be the wrong answer for you.

Whether a particular asset is in the estate, which rate applies to a particular beneficiary, whether a transfer made years before the death is caught, whether a disclaimer is a good idea: those are questions for an attorney or an accountant who has seen the documents. Use this site to understand the landscape. Do not use it as the basis for a filing, a payment or a decision that is hard to undo.

We are not a fiduciary

We are not a licensed fiduciary, executor, administrator or trustee, and we do not act in a fiduciary capacity for anyone. We are not appointed by any court, we hold no letters, and we have no authority over an estate or over anybody’s property.

We also never hold estate funds. Money does not pass through an account of ours on its way to you. Where property is recovered or a sale completes, the money goes from the source to you directly.

We are not a real estate broker

When we buy an inherited property we buy it as the purchaser, for our own account. We are not a broker or an agent, we do not list property, we do not market it to anyone else, and we do not represent buyers or sellers in a transaction.

That matters to you in a practical way. A broker owes you duties that a buyer does not, and if what you want is for a property to be marketed openly to find the highest price, what you want is a licensed real estate broker rather than us. We will say so. Our offer is one option to compare against that, not a replacement for it.

We are not the government

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or any government agency. We are not the Department of Revenue, we are not the Pennsylvania Treasury, and we are not a county Register of Wills or an Orphans’ Court. Nothing on this site is an official publication of any of them.

If a letter or a message ever suggests otherwise, it did not come from us. Anything the Commonwealth offers free stays free: you can search the Pennsylvania Treasury database yourself at no cost, and file your own claim, without paying anybody.

Figures change, and we date them

Every page here that states a statutory figure, a threshold or a county fee carries a line saying when it was last checked and links to the source it was checked against. That is deliberate. An undated figure on a page like this is a liability, and the date is also the clearest signal that somebody actually checks.

These numbers do move. Act 50 of 2025 changed statutory thresholds part way through a cycle, which is exactly how a page that was right when it was written stops being right. County offices change their fees and their filing requirements on their own schedule too. Before you file or pay anything, confirm the figure against the primary source or with a professional.

We do not promise an outcome

We do not guarantee that an estate will be settled by any particular date, that unclaimed property exists in your family’s name, that a search will find anything, that a court will reach any particular conclusion, or that a property will sell for any particular figure. Anyone who does guarantee those things is selling something.

We also do not state how long probate takes in Pennsylvania. No Pennsylvania court publishes that figure, so any tidy range you see quoted is invented. What is knowable is the sequence of statutory milestones, and those are set out on the probate process page with their citations.

The examples on this site are composites

These are composite descriptions of the kind of work we do. They are not client statements, and they are not descriptions of specific past engagements or outcomes.

There are no testimonials on this site, no client quotes, no star ratings and no logos of organisations we have supposedly worked with. That is not modesty. Presenting invented or unsubstantiated endorsements as real is unlawful, and we would rather have an emptier page than a page like that.

Where to go instead of us

For advice about a specific estate, speak with an attorney licensed in the state where that estate is being administered. For tax advice, speak to a certified public accountant or a tax attorney. For an open market sale of a property, speak to a licensed real estate broker. For a question about a filing, the county Register of Wills will usually answer it at no charge, and you can find the office on our county page.

Telling you that is not a formality. If we are not the right help we would rather you found the right help quickly than spent a month working through us to get there.