Washington lawmakers on Tuesday heard testimony on a bill that would close loopholes in the state’s probate system that allowed a Tacoma man and his associates to siphon millions of dollars from dead strangers’ estates by selling homes, cars and valuables.
When someone dies in Washington, probate is the legal process where the deceased’s property is redistributed, creditors are paid and heirs receive inheritance. If the person who died doesn’t have a last will and testament, a list of people is entitled to serve as personal representatives to administer the estate, starting with surviving spouses and family members.
The law also has language that allows “any suitable person” to be appointed by a court to administer a probate after 40 days. Assistant attorney general Ben Carr told the state House committee on Civil Rights & Judiciary that this “catch-all” language is what has been abused, and it’s what House Bill 2445 would reign in.
Carr was part of Attorney General Nick Brown’s successful lawsuit against the group of people who became third-party probate administrators of more than 200 estates in Kitsap and Pierce counties between 2019 and 2024. The profiteers, led by John B. Elliott, sold 90 homes altogether worth more than $28 million while collecting commissions and fees for themselves.
In one case in Burien, the Attorney General’s Office has said, the group gained control of a woman’s childhood home after her sister died of cancer. They received $110,000 through the sale of the house. Another victim who assumed the probate administrators were legitimate because they were court appointed had everything stolen from her family member’s house, according to the AG’s Office, including family heirlooms and her mother’s ashes.
“At the end of the day, they are taking advantage of grieving families in order to profit,” Carr testified Tuesday.
House Bill 2445 was drafted at Brown’s request. It would limit persons appointed under the “suitable person” provision to two petitions for appointment per year unless they are a bank, trust company or a professional service corporation formed by attorneys. It would disqualify people from acting as personal representatives if they have been convicted of a recent felony or a crime of moral turpitude, or if they have had letters of administration revoked in the last two years.
The bill would give surviving spouses, next of kin and other individuals prioritized to act as personal representatives more time to petition for letters of administration. It also would require probate proceedings to occur in the Washington county where the decedent resided at the time of death or where any part of the estate may be if they were not living in the state.
Currently, proceedings must occur in the county selected by the petitioner. A staff report read at Tuesday’s hearing said the “probates for profit” scheme relied on that to start probate proceedings in counties unconnected to the deceased, sometimes far away from potential heirs.
The bill would require appointed personal representatives to give notice to all heirs or beneficiaries of the estate within 20 days of their appointment.
“This bill is about protecting people, particularly a vulnerable group of people,” said a sponsor of the bill, Democratic Rep. Adison Richards, who serves the state’s 26th Legislative District, which includes Gig Harbor, Bremerton and the Key Peninsula.
The Washington State Attorney General’s Office said John B. Elliott and another defendant purchased this Central Tacoma home in 2021 for $10 “and other valuable consideration” after convincing the the estate’s heir there was little value in the property.
(Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer)
Republican Rep. Jim Walsh, ranking minority member of the committee, questioned whether the proposed changes to the probate system would make a complex legal process only more complicated for laypeople.
“While it may make it harder for exploitive organizations to insinuate themselves into a probate process, it also seems to me to make the process even more complicated for an heir or an individual who is not trained in the law,” Walsh said.
Richards said the intent of the bill was to make the process easier to understand but also to protect consumers. The representative told Walsh he’d be happy to engage with him on potential hang-ups he sees for laypeople.
“The idea here is really to try to clamp down on abusive practices,” Richards said.
During public testimony, Carr explained that those involved in Elliott’s probate scheme generally identified potential families to exploit by driving around and looking for homes that appeared in disrepair with no one living in them. Through internet searches, they would find out the owners had died and that no one had launched a probate, and they would do so themselves to get access to the house and sell it.
“In Mr. Elliott’s particular instance, he would, once in control of the probate, he would then hire his own contracting firm to fix up the house at whatever rates he chose to pay himself and then would use his own real estate firm to sell the house and pay himself an inflated commission,” Carr said. “In that way he gained access and siphoned money out of the estates.”