The $10,000 Suitcase: What to Do in the First 72 Hours After Inheriting a Property

The Suitcase in the Back of the Closet

In Anaheim Hills, a family believed they had finished the grueling job of clearing out a relative's home. They had spent weeks sorting belongings and hauling away donations and debris. They were confident the property was vacant and ready for the next stage of a probate sale in Anaheim Hills.

Our team performed one final, systematic sweep of the house anyway. In the back of a deep closet, hidden under years of neglect, we found an old, unremarkable suitcase.

Inside there was no vintage clothing and no box of photographs. There was a collection of high value jewelry, each piece meticulously wrapped in pantyhose to keep it concealed and quiet.

The family was stunned. They had almost thrown away a small fortune because it was not sitting out in plain sight. After the discovery, Attorney Russell Null turned to me and said: "Paula, if it wasn't for you, this would have been lost."

I tell that story because it is the clearest picture I have of how inheritances go wrong. Nobody in that family was careless. They were grieving and working fast, which is exactly the condition most heirs are in during the first week. The suitcase survived only because someone who was not emotionally attached to the house went through it with a method.

As a fiduciary or an heir, your first three days should be defined by precision. Emotion will come, and it should. It just should not be the thing deciding when the locks get changed.

Who Has Authority Over an Inherited Property in the First 72 Hours

Before you change a lock, it helps to know whose lock it is to change. That depends on how the property was held when the owner died, and families get this wrong more often than they get anything else wrong.

If the home was in a living trust, the successor trustee named in the trust steps in. California law puts a specific duty on that person: a trustee must take reasonable steps under the circumstances to take and keep control of the trust property and to preserve it.[1] That is a legal obligation, and "I was waiting for my brother to fly in" is a weak defense if something disappears in the meantime.

If the home has to go through probate, the court appoints a personal representative (an executor named in a will, or an administrator when there is no will). Once appointed, the personal representative has the right to, and must, take possession or control of the decedent's property, and must take the steps reasonably necessary to protect and preserve the estate property in their possession.[2] Until letters are issued, nobody has that formal authority, which is why the first days in a probate case are so often a vacuum.

My opinion, after a lot of these: whoever is most likely to be appointed should act as a caretaker immediately, in writing, with the family's knowledge. Secure the place and document it. Touch nothing else. Securing is defensible. Selling or giving away things before you have authority is how sibling disputes start. If you are the executor, read why being an executor is a thankless job before you do anything else in that house.

If you are a trustee, our successor trustee's guide and the Trust Property Roadmap walk through the rest of the administration once the property is locked down.

Why Secure Must Come Before Sort

The instinct after a death is to start sorting. Open the closets and decide what stays. I understand it. Sorting feels like progress, and it gives grieving people something to do with their hands.

Sorting first is backwards. Until the property is secured, you do not know who else is walking through it, and you cannot prove later what was there when you started.

Controlling access and securing entry points

• Locks. Change them immediately. Do not rely on a list of who might have a key. Over decades, keys go to housekeepers, gardeners, neighbors, old caregivers and grandchildren who moved out years ago.
• Windows. Walk every room and make sure each latch actually works and is locked. Older homes in Anaheim Hills and Orange often have a bathroom window that has not closed properly since the eighties.
• Side gates. This matters most on properties with pools or with easy backyard access from a neighbor's yard or a greenbelt. A padlock costs very little next to a drowning or a break-in.
• Garage access. Unplug the automatic garage door opener. It is the step people forget, and an old remote clipped to a visor somewhere is a working key to the house.
• Alarm and cameras. If there is a system, find out who holds the codes and who receives the alerts. Change the codes once you know.
• Mail. A stack of envelopes on the porch tells the whole street the house is empty. Arrange for mail to be collected or redirected through the proper channels.

Do all of this before the first relative arrives with a pickup truck. I mean that literally.

Your First 72 Hours After Inheriting a Property, in Order

This is the sequence we use, compressed to what can realistically get done in three days. Some families take five. That is fine, as long as the order holds.

1. Hour zero to twelve: lock it down. Change the locks, unplug the garage opener, secure the gates and windows, and collect any loose keys you can find in the house.
2. Same day: call the insurer. Tell the carrier the owner has died and the home is unoccupied, and ask in writing what the policy requires of a vacant property.
3. Day one: find the paperwork. Look for the will, the trust, the deed, recent property tax bills, the mortgage statement and the homeowners policy. Make copies and put the originals somewhere safe outside the house.
4. Day one or two: photograph and video everything. Every room, every closet with the door open, the garage, the attic hatch, the shed. Do it before anything is moved.
5. Day two: call an estate attorney. Confirm whether this is a trust administration or a probate, and who should serve.
6. Day two or three: the systematic sweep. Search the hotspots described below, in a fixed order with two people present.
7. Day three: stabilize the house. Set the thermostat, check for leaks, shut off water to anything that is dripping, keep the gardener coming so the house does not look abandoned.
8. Day three: start the calendar. Write down the statutory deadlines that apply to your situation (they are covered later in this guide) and who is responsible for each one.

Notice what is missing from that list. Nobody is listing the house and nobody is running an estate sale. All of that comes later, and it goes better because the first three days were done properly.

The Treasure Hunt Hotspots You Are Likely Overlooking

People of a certain generation did not always trust banks, and many of them lived through times when keeping valuables at home felt safer. The result is that real money and real jewelry end up in places nobody would think to look. Our team checks these spots systematically, every time, in every house.

• Old luggage and garment bags. As the Anaheim Hills case showed, these are classic hiding spots, and they are also the first thing a tired family tosses.
• Shoe boxes and hidden closet corners. Deep shelves often hide envelopes of cash or small jewelry boxes pushed all the way to the back.
• Kitchen tins and junk drawers. Value gets tucked into the most mundane canisters: the flour tin or the coffee can.
• Tool boxes. Look past the wrenches. Tool boxes are often used as makeshift safes precisely because nobody else opens them.
• Behind framed artwork. We often find documents or cash taped to the back of frames or slipped inside the backing.
• Inside books. This is the most common place we find old bonds or high denomination bills. Every book gets fanned before it is boxed.
• Sheds, attics, garage rafters and crawl spaces. The places with a pull-down ladder or a padlock are the places people skip because they are dusty and awkward.

By documenting everything, including sheds and attic access, before anything is moved, we keep the process calmer, clearer and fair for every heir.

Then there is the less pleasant category. Not everything hidden in an old house is valuable, and some of it is dangerous. Read about the live grenade we found in another Anaheim Hills estate if you want to know why our team does not let family members open unmarked boxes in a garage without looking first.

Document Before Anything Moves

Documentation sounds like busywork until someone asks where Mom's ring went.

In a probate, documentation is also a legal requirement. The personal representative must file an inventory and appraisal of the estate property with the court, generally within four months after letters are first issued, although the court can allow more time when it is reasonable.[3] The same filing has to include a certification about the change in ownership statement for any California real property the decedent owned.[3] You cannot inventory what has already gone to the donation center.

In a trust, there is no court inventory in the same form, but the trustee still owes beneficiaries an honest account of what was there and what happened to it. Photographs and a written log are the cheapest insurance against an accusation you will ever buy.

What a useful record looks like

• A video walk-through of every room with closets and drawers open, narrated with the date.
• Close photographs of jewelry, art, collectibles, firearms, vehicles and anything with a serial number.
• A simple log: item, location found, who found it, where it went. One line per item.
• Copies of any financial statements and insurance policies you find, kept with the originals stored offsite.

Two people should be present for the search of any room where valuables are likely. Not because anyone is dishonest. Because a witness protects the person doing the work as much as it protects the estate.

The Danger of the Open Door Policy

Every family has one. The aunt who has had a key for thirty years. The neighbor who watered the plants. The adult grandchild who "just needs to grab a few things." The caregiver who still has the garage remote. In the first week after a death, the house quietly becomes a place where people come and go.

I call it the open door policy, and it causes more damage than burglars do. Things leave with good intentions: a sentimental item here, a lamp somebody was promised there. A month later, two siblings remember the promise differently and there is no record of what left or when.

Here is the position I take with every family, and I will hold it even when it makes me briefly unpopular: nobody removes anything until the inventory is done and the person with legal authority has signed off. Sentimental requests go on a written list. The list gets honored, fairly, later.

Strangers are the other half of the problem. Estate sale companies, junk haulers and "we buy houses" investors start calling quickly, and some will ask to walk through. Each of them should wait until the documentation is finished, and then come in on a schedule with someone supervising. An investor who sees the house on day two, before it is cleaned or valued, is not there to do you a favor. For the longer view on cleanout costs versus value, see the 3-bucket strategy for an inherited house.

The Hoarder House Reality and Safety First

Some inherited homes are tidy. Others are genuine hoarder houses, where the rooms are full to the ceiling and the floor has not been visible in a decade. Those houses are where people get hurt.

Safety protocols for initial entry

Entering these environments without the right equipment can lead to injuries and to expensive delays in the sale.

My advice is simple. If you open the front door and cannot see the floor of the first room, close it and call professionals. A licensed remediation or hoarding cleanup company costs money. An emergency room visit, or a fall through a rotted subfloor, costs more, and it stops the whole estate administration while everyone deals with it.

Property Tax Deadlines When You Inherit a House in California

The legal clock starts at the date of death, whether or not anyone is ready. A few California deadlines matter in almost every inherited property case in Orange County, and the first one shows up sooner than people think.

The change in ownership statement

For property tax purposes, the date of death is the date of change in ownership.[6] The person acquiring the property, or the personal representative, has to file a change in ownership statement with the county. If the estate is not probated, the statement is due within 150 days after the date of death; if it is probated, it must be filed before or at the time the inventory and appraisal is filed with the court.[5] If the assessor sends a written request and the statement is not filed within 90 days of that request, the penalty is the greater of $100 or 10 percent of the taxes on the new base year value, capped at $5,000 when the property qualifies for the homeowners' exemption and $20,000 when it does not.[5]

Prop 19 and the parent-child exclusion

Under Proposition 19, children can sometimes keep a parent's lower assessed value, but only for a family home that was the parent's principal residence and becomes the child's principal residence. Rentals do not qualify.[6] The homeowners' exemption has to be filed within one year from the date of death or transfer; filed later, the exclusion applies only going forward.[6] The exclusion is limited to the factored base year value plus an adjusted amount, which is $1,044,586 for transfers from February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027.[6]

For trusts there is one more early deadline. When a revocable trust becomes irrevocable because the settlor died, the trustee must serve a notification on the beneficiaries and the settlor's heirs no later than 60 days after the event, and that notice warns that a contest generally cannot be brought more than 120 days after it is served.[4] I mention it here because the 72 hour work, the locks and the photographs, is exactly the record that makes that notification uneventful.

The Silent Drain of Delaying the Sale

Once the house is secured, many families exhale and stop. That is understandable after the first week. It is also expensive, because an empty house in Orange County keeps costing money every single day whether anyone visits it or not.

Read your homeowners policy for anything that mentions vacancy or unoccupancy, then call the carrier. Many standard policies were written for an occupied home, and a vacant one may need a different policy or an endorsement. Get the answer in writing.

None of this means you should rush to list. A probate or trust sale that is priced badly or listed before the house is ready costs far more than a few months of holding costs. It means the clock deserves a decision. If you do not know yet whether the house should be kept or sold, read whether to keep or sell an inherited house in Orange County and put a date on the calendar by which the family will decide.

Why the Date of Death Value Matters for Taxes

There is one more thing worth doing early, and it pays for itself later: get a professional opinion of what the house was worth on the date of death.

For federal income tax purposes, the basis of inherited property is generally its fair market value on the date of the decedent's death, whether or not an estate tax return is filed.[7] An alternate valuation date can apply only if the executor files an estate tax return (Form 706) and elects it.[7] If you later sell the house for more than your basis, the difference is a taxable gain.[7]

In practical terms, a well supported date of death value is often the difference between a small capital gain and a large one when the house finally sells. A formal appraisal is the strongest evidence; a broker's opinion with good comps is a reasonable starting point. Either way, it is far easier to establish in the first weeks, while the house still looks the way it did that day, than two years later after a remodel.

Your CPA should make the final call on how the basis is reported. For the longer discussion, see our guide to capital gains tax on an inherited house in California.

What Not to Do in the First 72 Hours

A short list, because the mistakes are predictable.

• Do not throw away anything that has not been searched, including luggage, boxes, books and tins.
• Do not let anyone take items home, however small or sentimental, before the inventory.
• Do not sign anything with an investor, an estate sale company, a cleanout service or a listing agent in the first week.
• Do not move into the house, or let a relative move in, without the attorney's advice. It complicates the administration and can complicate the property tax picture.
• Do not cancel the homeowners policy or the utilities. An unheated, uninsured house is the worst version of this situation.
• Do not post about the death and the address on social media in the same week. Empty houses get noticed.

Reading the first 48 hours of probate is a good companion to this list, especially on the privacy side.

How Our Team Handles the First Days

When a family calls us in the first week, our work in the house usually starts before any conversation about price. We coordinate with the estate attorney, secure the property, document it and run the systematic sweep with a family member present. Then we sit down with whoever has authority and build a plan for the house that fits the administration, whether that ends in a sale or a family member keeping it.

I hold the CPRES designation for probate real estate, and I went to law school before I went into real estate. I am not an attorney, and I will tell you so more than once, but that background is why our team works so closely with counsel in these first days instead of around them.

The Anaheim Hills family did almost everything right. They just did it in a slightly different order than the house needed. That suitcase is the reason I am stubborn about the order now.