In North Dakota, the North Dakota Century Code Chapter 30.1-18 set forth the duties of personal representatives administering estates. Your duties as a personal representative or executor of a decedent’s estate require you to follow specific time-lines. You are personally liable for any improper misdeeds or conduct arising out of your administrative duties as a personal representative or executor.

After your initial appointment as the personal representative, administrator or executor of a decedent’s estate, you should send a copy of the Affidavit Forwarding Application to Human Services to the North Dakota Department of Human Services. On this form, you must list all of the property that the decedent owned jointly with rights of survivorship. You must also send each known creditor a notice of the decedent’s death and pay all of the decedent’s outstanding obligations before transferring estate property.

You must send each named heir a “Notice and Information to Heirs and Devisees” within 30 days of your formal appointment date. Within the first 180 days of appointment or within 270 days of the decedent’s death, whichever occurs later, you must complete an original inventory form. After you inventory the decedent’s total estate property, you must file an original inventory form with the local North Dakota district court or mail a copy to each of the decedent’s named heirs. If you are the appointed personal representative for a decedent who died without a written will, you are an intestate administrator. In this case, you must mail a copy of your inventory to each of the decedent’s descendants entitled to receive property under the state’s intestacy statute.