Account of Fiduciary Probate

You have been appointed the Conservator and it is time to do an Annual Account.
Darren Findling of The Probate Pro explains step by step how to prepare and file the Account of Fiduciary.
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Legal Disclaimer:
This video is for educational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice. The Probate Pro, PLC, QuietTitle.com and any other entities of The Darren Findling Law Firm, PLC do not claim to be an “expert” or “specialist” in their legal practice areas.
You've taken on the important role of serving as the Conservator for another individual. And, now it's time to complete your Annual Account of Fiduciary. Hi, I'm Darren Findling of The Probate Pro and I'm going to walk you through step by step how to work with this annual account of fiduciary form and what the requirements are please understand that this is just the beginning just the basics I strongly urge you to work with a competent skilled attorney to ensure that you follow all of Michigan's court rules statues and obligations that you have as a conservator the conservatorship is the fiduciary role of handling finances and part of that financial responsibility of course is to account let's take an in-depth look at the annual account of fiduciary the first thing we're going to do is understand where this falls within the time line of serving as a conservator now understand that this is already one year from the anniversary date of when you have received your letters of conservatorship a petition would have been filed you would have had your court hearing you would have been appointed already now there are two relevant provisions of Michigan law that you should be familiar with one is MCL 754188 it provides that a conservator at least yearly should account to the court and to the interested parties for all of the financial affairs of the person they're serving as conservator of there are some rare occasions where the court may enter an order that allows this to occur by annually or may even waive that requirement but those are rare and would only occur with a court order in addition there's a Court Rule MCR 5.40 9 it sets forth that this accounting period should include the anniversary date of your appointment of conservator one year from there and needs to be filed with the court within 56 days so you really have a little short up two months after that anniversary date to gather all the requisite material that you have so that you can complete and fill out the annual account of fiduciary now one piece of advice that I urge and encourage anyone who is going to serve as the conservator is don't wait until the year is over but rather account on a day week and monthly basis use an accounting software keep all receipts copy all bank statements these are the types of things you're going to need at the end and it's awfully difficult at the end of the accounting period to then go and try to gather all of these things you wouldn't be you'd be amazed at how often people walk into my office with a box of scrap paper and receipts and unorganized information and ask us to assist them in an accounting so I strongly encourage you to keep accurate records every step of the way in addition to a log so that you are identifying the time associated and what you did so when you need to reflect on anything that occurred within that accounting period you can simply refer back to your log to remind you of what took place and if you're not the type of person that's good at managing finances or you're not the type of person that's good at keeping track of documents and records you shouldn't be the conservator you should have somebody else perform that role let's now look at the form itself before you have here is form PC 583 this is a state court administrator approved form that can be used for filing your annual account understand that there's also a long-form account that you can use if you so choose the short form is actually pretty user friendly easy to use so let's start with this document at the top where the red arrow is pointing it identifies whether it's an annual account you can put the annual account number for example first second