Who We Help

Estate Planners

If this were just about the law, your job would be easy. You would quickly transfer assets using well-documented procedures through or around the court system. Your team would collect life insurance proceeds, sell liquid assets, and distribute the net proceeds to the heirs.

But most of the time, that’s not how it works. There are people involved, people with emotions, who may not always be responsive nor act in their own self-interest. Records are rarely clean.  There’s usually a home involved that may need repairs, and it’s, often filled with chattel that needs to be cleared. The family member quarrel. They have disparate opinions on the value of the personal property.

Your clients are under stress and may postpone taking basic actions necessary for estate resolution. Because it’s an emotional process dredging up sensitive family issues, painful memories, long-repressed resentments and even mortality itself.

Retain Operation Relo to professionally work through the messy issues that need resolution to settle an estate.

We have cool heads required to liquidate assets, fix up and sell the home, and handhold emotional family members. We also serve as POA, executor or guardian in certain circumstances.

How It Works

Operation Relo is the estate planner’s secret weapon to work through the sticky issues of settling an estate. We are prepared to handle cleanouts, repairs, tag sales, moving & storage, and even many of the emotional and fiduciary issues that go along with these situations.

Upon referral, we will talk to your client on the phone. Usually, we will follow up with a physical meeting in the home to further assess the overall situation. At that stage we are trying to determine:

  • What does the family need to move forward?
  • How to best dispose of the possessions from the house? To family? An estate sale? How large is the cleanout going to be?
  • The repairs required that give the client the best return if the property is to be sold.
  • Personal issues. What are the family dynamics?

We then give the client a proposal to resolve the issues that may be holding them back from getting the house in the market which will be coordinated with your practice. These often include:

  • Finding a new place for the surviving spouses to live
  • Selling the home
  • Conducting an estate sale
  • Moving to the new place
  • Conducting repairs to optimize the market value of the home
  • Cleaning out and donating what is left over
  • A final cleaning crew

Financing Programs

Often no one in the family wants to be the first person to write a check, sensing that if they do so, they will be asked to continue writing checks throughout this difficult process. That’s one of the reasons estates stay frozen. Operation Relo has two plans to address this situation.

  • Escrow financing. If there is sufficient net equity in the home, we will perform the work required to get the property prepared for sale without up-front payment on some or all of the job by placing a lien on the property. When the sales closes, we are paid from escrow. This arrangement has been the catalyst to get things moving for other clients in the past.
  • Foreclosure financing. Many homes owned by elders face foreclosure. Health issues and benevolent neglect have caused the homeowner to forget to pay taxes or fall behind on mortgage payments. Often these properties are upside down. Our foreclosure financing program involves significant, but it can work for homes in a wide range of market values – from $30,000 to $3,000,000. The most important requirement is that the homeowner is a rational, responsive person.

If this sounds like a service that can complement your practice, contact us. We’re happy to talk and to come to your office to meet with your colleagues.