Should I start cleaning out the house right away?

No. Do not clean, box, or haul anything in the first 72 hours. Secure the property, find the will, and let the contents be valued first. Items removed before valuation cannot be put back into an inventory filing, and the unrecognizable item is frequently the one an appraiser wants to see.

What is the very first thing to do?

Secure the property and locate the will. Locks, utilities, insurance, and mail become your responsibility immediately and stay that way until the house transfers. Everything else — valuation, sale, clearance — waits on the estate being opened with the probate court.

Can I take a cash offer for the contents before probate opens?

Ask the estate attorney first. Selling estate contents before the estate is opened and the inventory obligation is understood is how executors end up filing numbers they cannot defend. A written valuation costs nothing and protects the filing.

The First 72 Hours After You Become an Executor in Ladue

Name: Ladue Estate Sales
Price range: $$

Ladue Estate Sales works almost entirely with executors, and the call almost always comes in the same shape: a parent died, the house on Price Road or off Litzsinger is full, and nobody handed you a first step.

Here is the first 72 hours, in order.

Hour one: secure the property

Locks, utilities, insurance, mail. From the moment you are named, maintaining the house is legally yours and it stays yours until the property transfers. This is also the reason to read any liquidation contract carefully before signing: a company that takes exclusive possession of the house, or attaches a fine to you entering it, is asking you to hand over a duty you cannot actually delegate.

Hour two: find the will, then call the attorney

St. Louis County probate runs out of Clayton. The estate has to be opened before contents are sold, and the inventory you will eventually file is easier to defend when the valuation happened before anything left the house.

Day one to three: pull out what the family is keeping

This is the only sorting you should do. Walk the house, take out the things that are staying in the family, and stop there.

Do not clean. Do not box anything up. Do not haul a load to the dump because a room reads as clutter. Families tell us the same story constantly — months lost going through every scrap of paper, and a blind donation run that took something valuable with it. Sorting is the job we are hired for. It is not a prerequisite you have to finish first.

What you should not do yet

Do not take a same-week cash offer for the contents before you know what they are worth, and do not agree to a commission that has not been stated as a number. A free walkthrough puts a written valuation in your hands, which the attorney can use for the inventory filing whether or not you ever run a sale with us.

Then the mechanical part

Once the estate is open and the contents are valued, the rest is a schedule rather than a decision: pricing and staging, a 3-day weekend sale, clearance of whatever did not sell, and an itemized written settlement reconciled within 14 days. 35% commission, $0 out-of-pocket, and the house handed back emptied and ready to photograph.

The first 72 hours are the part nobody prepares you for. The rest, we do.