Settling an estate in Montana
An executor in Montana has to work through the District Court and a long list of tasks that have nothing to do with the court. This page sets out what Montana law actually requires at each step, with the section it comes from and the date we last read it.
- Probate court
- District Court
- Small-estate shortcut
- Estates of $100,000 or less may qualify for a simplified small-estate procedure (personal property only — it will not transfer real estate).
- Creditor claim period
- 4 months
- Typical timeline
- 6–12 months
- State death tax
- None — no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax
Immediate
Obtain certified death certificates
Montana names the eligible people in the statute and gives a second office to try. Under MCA § 50-15-121 both the Department and the County Clerk and Recorders issue certified copies, on application, to the registrant, the registrant’s spouse, children, parents or guardian, or an authorized representative. Other people may still obtain copies, but only by demonstrating that the record is needed for the determination or protection of their personal or property rights — so a creditor, a distant relative or a beneficiary under a will can qualify by explaining why. The county clerk and recorder is often the quicker of the two offices. All certified copies carry security features designed to deter alteration or counterfeiting. Two practical notes. The funeral director usually orders the first batch as part of their service, so ask them how many they have already requested before you order more — families routinely pay twice. And order more than you think: banks, insurers and transfer agents often keep the copy you give them rather than returning it. Confirm the current fee on the state’s own page at the moment you order, because fees change without notice.
MCA § 50-15-121·last read 2026-08-18
Locate the will (or confirm there is none)
In Montana nothing happens until an interested person asks. Under MCA § 72-2-536 the custodian’s duty arises after the death and on request of an interested person: they must then deliver the will with reasonable promptness to a person able to secure its probate, and if none is known, to an appropriate court. There is no deadline running from the death itself and no automatic trigger, so a will can sit in a drawer or a safe deposit box indefinitely while everyone waits for someone else to move. If you are an heir, the request is yours to make and it is worth making in writing. A person who willfully fails to deliver a will is liable to any person aggrieved for the damages sustained, and a person who willfully refuses after a court order brought to compel delivery is subject to penalty for contempt of court. Section 72-2-535 separately provides for deposit of a will with the court during the testator’s lifetime, so ask the district court whether one was lodged there before assuming the only copy is with the family. Until you ask, nothing is late. Put the request in writing and keep a dated copy.
MCA § 72-2-536·last read 2026-08-25
Short-term
Claim the family allowances you are entitled to
Montana follows the Uniform Probate Code and all three protections stack. Under MCA § 72-2-412 a surviving spouse takes a homestead allowance of $22,500, or where there is no spouse the minor and dependent children divide that figure between them. It is exempt from and has priority over all claims against the estate, and it is in addition to any share passing by the will, by intestate succession or by way of elective share. Section 72-2-413 adds exempt property worth up to $15,000 over and above any security interests, in household furniture, automobiles, furnishings, appliances and personal effects. If the estate does not hold $15,000 of such items the family may make the value up out of other assets, which is a detail many states leave out. And § 72-2-414 adds a reasonable allowance for maintenance during administration on top of both, capped at one year where the estate cannot meet its allowed claims. That is $37,500 before the maintenance allowance is counted.
MCA §§ 72-2-412, 72-2-413, 72-2-414·last read 2026-08-21
Notify beneficiaries and keep them informed
Montana sets thirty days, and the consequence of missing it is narrower than people fear. Under MCA § 72-3-603 every personal representative except a special administrator must, not later than thirty days after appointment, give information of the appointment to the heirs and devisees by delivery or ordinary mail, at each address reasonably available. Subsection (3) is the part worth knowing: failure to give the information is a breach of your duty to the persons concerned, but it does not affect the validity of your appointment, your powers or your other duties. So a missed notice is a problem to fix, not a reason to think the whole administration is void. The notice must give your name and address, say it is going to persons who may have an interest, state whether bond has been filed, and describe the court where the papers are on file. Getting this wrong rarely costs money directly — it stalls the case. An estate that cannot show notice was properly given can be held open, and the appointment itself can be reopened, so keep proof of what you sent, to whom, and on what date.
MCA § 72-3-603·last read 2026-08-25
Determine if probate is required
Montana measures the $100,000 against the value of the Probate Estate wherever located, less liens and encumbrances — so real property counts toward the limit, though the affidavit transfers only personal property and never a deed. The figure rose from $50,000 on 1 October 2023. One genuinely useful extra that most guidance omits: if what remains is unclaimed property held by the Department of Revenue and it is $5,000 or less, the Department may refund it to a successor regardless of the size of the estate (MCA 72-3-1101(2)). So a single forgotten account does not by itself force a full process. Thirty days must have passed since the death.
MCA § 72-3-1101·last read 2026-08-18
Legal Process
File a petition with the probate court
Montana has both routes and the difference in what they cost you is large. Ordinary estates go through informal probate handled administratively. A formal testacy proceeding, by contrast, is described by the statute in plain terms as litigation to determine whether the person left a valid will. It is commenced by an interested person filing a petition asking the court, after notice and a hearing, to enter an order probating a will, or to set aside or prevent an informal probate, or to declare that the person died intestate. A formal proceeding may be brought whether or not a will has already been informally probated, and it need not include a request to appoint a personal representative. If someone is threatening to “contest“, this is the machinery they mean. One practical point: the word your state uses for this office is not decoration — asking for the wrong one wastes a trip and a phone call. And where a registrar or clerk can grant it, no judge is involved and no hearing is set, so nothing in the system will prompt you: the case moves only when you file.
MCA § 72-3-302·last read 2026-08-19
Inventory all assets and debts
Montana gives you nine months — equal longest fixed period of any state we cover, matched by New York, whose fiduciary files within nine months of letters under 22 NYCRR 207.20 — but read it against Montana’s hard two-year deadline for closing the whole estate. Under MCA § 72-3-607 the personal representative must within nine months of appointment prepare an inventory of the probate property owned at death, in reasonable detail, showing each item’s fair market value at the date of death and the type and amount of any encumbrance. It must also state the fair market value of the deceased’s interest in each item — which is not the same as the item’s whole value where something was co-owned. You may employ a qualified and disinterested appraiser for anything whose value is open to reasonable doubt, and different people may appraise different assets. Two things that apply everywhere. Values are as of the date of death, not today — a house that has risen since is still listed at what it was worth then. And the inventory is the document everything else is measured against: fees, bond, and every later distribution. It is also what beneficiaries most often challenge, so take the time to get it right rather than filing a rough figure you intend to fix later.
MCA § 72-3-607·last read 2026-09-09
Publish notice to creditors
Montana makes publication mandatory on the standard Uniform Probate Code pattern. Under MCA § 72-3-801 the personal representative upon appointment shall publish a notice once a week for three successive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, announcing the appointment and your address and notifying creditors to present claims within four months after the date of first publication or be forever barred. You may also give written notice by mail or other delivery to any particular creditor. Because the four months runs from the first publication rather than the last, arrange the notice promptly — every week of delay is a week added to the period in which the estate cannot safely be distributed. Two things to hold on to. Publication is what starts the clock in most states, so an estate where nobody published can stay exposed to claims far longer than the family expects. And a known creditor usually has to be told directly — publication alone does not bind someone whose name and address you could reasonably have found.
MCA § 72-3-801·last read 2026-08-18
Administration
Identify and close digital accounts
Montana names its own affidavit by its Montana name, which matters when a provider is reading your letter. Part 4 of chapter 31 of Title 72 is the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, enacted in 2017. Under MCA § 72-31-406 the personal representative gives the custodian a written request, a certified copy of the death certificate, and a certified copy of the letter of appointment — or a collection of personal property affidavit, which is what Montana calls the small-estate route, or a court order. Unless the person used the provider’s online tool you must also produce the will, trust or power of attorney evidencing consent. Among the court findings available under subsection (5) is simply that disclosure is reasonably necessary for administration of the estate. The rule to hold on to everywhere: without consent you generally get only the catalogue — who was contacted, when, and at what address — not what was actually said. “The executor can get into the accounts” is not what these laws do. And if you are advising someone still living, the provider’s own online tool is where this should be set, because it beats the will.
MCA § 72-31-406·last read 2026-08-25
Financial Settlement
Pay valid debts and expenses
Montana merges two classes that most states keep apart, and adds child support high in the order. MCA § 72-3-807 ranks them where assets are insufficient. (a) Costs and expenses of administration. (b) Reasonable funeral expenses and the reasonable and necessary medical and hospital expenses of the last illness together in one class. (c) Federal estate and Montana estate taxes. (d) Current and past-due child support for the deceased’s children under a support order as defined in § 40-5-201. (e) Debts with preference under federal and Montana law. (f) Other federal and Montana taxes. (g) All other claims. Because the funeral and the last illness share class (b), if there is not enough for both they abate together rather than the funeral being paid in full first — the opposite of what happens in most states. Subsection (2) adds that no claim is preferred over another of the same class, and that a claim due and payable gets no preference over claims not due. Paying a lower-ranked debt before a higher-ranked one can leave you personally liable for the difference. So where the estate may not cover everything, stop before paying anything beyond the funeral and administration costs, and take advice.
MCA § 72-3-807·last read 2026-08-27
File required tax returns
Montana still has an estate tax on the books, and it still collects nothing. MCA § 72-16-904 imposes an estate tax on the transfer of the estate of every deceased person whose estate is subject to the federal estate tax and has a taxable situs in Montana. But § 72-16-905 says how it is computed, and that is the whole story. The tax is equal to the maximum tax credit allowable for state death taxes against the federal estate tax. The stated purpose of the part is to impose only those additional taxes necessary to give Montana the full benefit of that credit. Congress replaced that credit with a deduction, so the maximum credit is zero and so is the Montana tax. This is why Montana appears on every list of states with no estate tax even though the sections are still printed in the code. Montana has no inheritance tax. It does tax income, so an estate earning income during administration will have a Montana fiduciary return to file. None of that removes the federal returns: the deceased’s final income tax return, and Form 1041 for income the estate itself earns during administration. And it does not help with property in another state, which may carry that state’s own death tax and its own filing.
MCA §§ 72-16-904, 72-16-905·last read 2026-08-25
Distribution
Distribute assets to heirs
Montana follows the Uniform Probate Code tiers with the model’s own figures. MCA § 72-2-112 sets four shares. The spouse takes the entire estate if no descendant or parent survives, or if every descendant is also the surviving spouse’s and the spouse has no other children. They take the first $300,000 plus three quarters of the balance if there is no descendant but a parent survives. They take the first $225,000 plus half if all the descendants are shared but the spouse has one or more children of their own. And they take the first $150,000 plus half if one or more of the deceased’s descendants are not the spouse’s. The surviving-parent tier catches childless couples out — a living parent of the deceased takes a quarter of everything above $300,000. Montana also shuts out an absent parent, and like Arizona it shuts out that parent’s relatives with them. Under MCA § 72-2-124(3), inheritance from or through a child by either natural parent — OR BY THAT PARENT’S KINDRED — is precluded unless the parent openly treated the child as their own and did not refuse to support them. There is no time period and no court finding required by the section: the test is open treatment plus not refusing support. Where a child dies without a spouse or descendants, that clause can decide which side of the family takes the estate. The same section also says who counts as a child. Under § 72-2-124(1) an individual is the child of their natural parents “regardless of their marital status”. Under subsection (2) an adopted individual is the child of the adopting parents and not of the natural parents. But adoption by the spouse of a natural parent has no effect on the relationship with that natural parent, nor on the right of the child or a descendant of the child to inherit from or through the other natural parent. A stepparent adoption in Montana therefore costs the child nothing on either side. Montana then added a second parent bar in 2019 which sits alongside the open-treatment test and works quite differently. Under § 72-2-125 a parent is barred where their rights were terminated and the relationship was not judicially reestablished, or where the child died before turning eighteen and there is clear and convincing evidence that immediately before the death those rights could have been terminated for nonsupport, abandonment, abuse, neglect or other acts or omissions. A parent caught by either route is treated as having predeceased the child. These shares apply only where there is no valid will — a will overrides all of it. And do not distribute anything until the creditor period has run and the debts are settled: a representative who pays the family early can be personally liable for what is still owing.
MCA §§ 72-2-112, 72-2-124, 72-2-125·last read 2026-09-09
Close Estate
File a final accounting and close the estate
Montana puts a hard two-year limit on the whole administration and enforces it with a penalty that falls on the representative personally. Under MCA § 72-3-1015, if an estate has not been closed within two years of the personal representative’s appointment, the supreme court administrator notifies the district judge, who orders the personal representative and their attorney to appear and show cause why it is still open. If the judge finds there was no good cause, the judge may order the estate closed within 30 days and order that neither the personal representative nor the attorney may receive any fee or compensation from the estate. Very few states attach a financial sanction to delay — in Montana, drifting costs you your fee. Closing is what ends your exposure, so do not simply stop when the money runs out — an estate left open leaves the representative personally on the hook. And filing a closing statement is not the same as being discharged. In several states the appointment only terminates some months later, if nobody objects. Keep the file, the receipts and the proof of what you sent until then.
MCA § 72-3-1015·last read 2026-08-18
Work through this as a checklist
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EstateMate is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Every note above cites the section it came from and the date it was last read, so you can check it yourself. Statutes change, and the right answer can turn on facts specific to your family — when something looks close to the line, talk to a Montana probate attorney.