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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The inventory and appraisal is the first milestone to be passed in settling a decedent’s estate.

An inventory and appraisal is relevant whether a decedent’s assets are held in the decedent’s name and/or held in the decedent’s living trust.

The inventory serves more than one purpose. Let us discuss the relevance and preparation of the inventory and appraisal when settling a decedent’s estate.

Prior to opening a possible probate it is necessary to know whether the total gross value of the assets in the decedent’s probate estate qualifies as a small estate — presently less than $184,500. If so, then no probate is required to transfer title to the decedent’s beneficiaries or heirs from the small estate.

In California, if a decedent’s estate owns real property, however, then an inventory and appraisal is required, even in a small estate. The inventory is either attached to the affidavit of small estate or, in a probate, filed with the court.

In a probate the inventory and appraisal is always required. It serves various purposes, including, to adjust the size of the personal representative’s probate bond (unless waived), to begin a probate accounting, and to determine the statutory fees owed to the personal representative and to his or her attorney.

The appraised values of assets listed on an inventory of a decedent’s estate are established by the local court appointed probate referee (a special appraiser).

Real property, vehicles and household contents, including firearms, are assets routinely appraised by a probate referee. However, valuable items of personal property — such as paintings, antiques, jewelry, valuable stamps and coins — require a private personal property appraiser.

That additional appraisal is incorporated by reference into the inventory and appraisal. The inventory is then submitted to the court (in a probate) or is attached to a small estate affidavit, as relevant.

In California, there is a Judicial Council inventory and appraisal form that is used in court proceedings. It has two attached schedules, that is, schedule one, lists bank accounts and date of death balances, and schedule two, lists real and personal property (including vehicles) where values are determined by the probate referee.

With trust administrations, the trustee still needs to prepare an inventory and appraisal, but is not limited to using the services of a probate referee or the Judicial Council form.

However, if the probate referee is utilized, then a different Judicial Council form called an Appraisal Report of California Probate Referee is then used.

The appraisal report has three different schedules that may be attached, as relevant, schedule one for real property, schedule two for stocks and bonds, and schedule three for personal property and miscellaneous other items.

The appraised date of death values listed on an Inventory and Appraisal or Appraisal Report sets the income tax basis of the appraised decedent’s assets. Basis is used to compute capital gains or losses on sales or exchanges of assets. That is, when assets are sold or exchanged for more than their income tax basis then there may be a capital gains tax owed on that transaction.

An inventory and appraisal can be modified by the filing of a corrected inventory (to correct mistakes on an already filed inventory) and a supplemental inventory (to add additional assets).

The total value of all assets under management, taking into consideration all inventories, becomes part of the Fee Base for computing statutory fees owed to the personal representative and his or her attorney.

The foregoing discussion is not legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney for guidance.

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.

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Written by: DENNIS FORDHAM

Published: 17 August 2024

Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or less than that of a small star.

Backyard Worlds uses images from NASA’s WISE, or Wide-field Infrared Explorer, mission, which mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011. It was reactivated as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) in 2013 and retired on Aug. 8, 2024.

A few years ago, longtime Backyard Worlds citizen scientists Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden spotted a faint, fast-moving object called CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, marching across their screens in the WISE images.

Follow-up observations with several ground-based telescopes helped scientists confirm the discovery and characterize the object. These citizen scientists are now co-authors on the team’s study about this discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (a pre-print version is available here).

“I can't describe the level of excitement,” said Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”

CWISE J1249 is zooming out of the Milky Way at about 1 million miles per hour. But it also stands out for its low mass, which makes it difficult to classify as a celestial object. It could be a low-mass star, or if it doesn’t steadily fuse hydrogen in its core, it would be considered a brown dwarf, putting it somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.

Ordinary brown dwarfs are not that rare. Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 volunteers have discovered more than 4,000 of them! But none of the others are known to be on their way out of the galaxy.

This new object has yet another unique property. Data obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, show that it has much less iron and other metals than other stars and brown dwarfs. This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.

Why does this object move at such high speed? One hypothesis is that CWISE J1249 originally came from a binary system with a white dwarf, which exploded as a supernova when it pulled off too much material from its companion. Another possibility is that it came from a tightly bound cluster of stars called a globular cluster, and a chance meeting with a pair of black holes sent it soaring away.

“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster,” says Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Scientists will look more closely at the elemental composition of CWISE J1249 for clues about which of these scenarios is more likely.

This discovery has been a team effort on multiple levels—a collaboration involving volunteers, professionals, and students. Kabatnik credits other citizen scientists with helping him search, including Melina Thévenot, who “blew my mind with her personal blog about doing searches using Astronomical Data Query Language,” he said. Software written by citizen scientist Frank Kiwy was also instrumental in this finding, he said.

The study is led by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 science team member Adam Burgasser, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and includes co-authors Hunter Brooks and Austin Rothermich, astronomy students who both began their astronomy careers as citizen scientists.

Become a citizen scientist

Want to help discover the next extraordinary space object? Join the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 now — participation is open to anyone in any country worldwide.

Podcast

Check out this NASA’s Curious Universe podcast episode to hear personal stories from citizen scientists engaged NASA-related projects.

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Written by: NASA Science Editorial Team

Published: 17 August 2024

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lakeport City Council last week gave final approval to a $1.1 million project meant to improve pavement and sidewalk conditions along a half-mile stretch of South Main Street.

At its Aug. 6 meeting, the council approved the South Main Street Pavement Maintenance Project’s plans, specifications and working details, and awarded the construction contract to Granite Construction Co.

Public Works Director Ron Ladd’s written report to the council said the project improves roadway conditions on South Main Street from Lakeport Boulevard to First Street.

He said the project’s components include pavement repairs and markings, surfacing, utility adjustments and rapid flashing beacons.

“The contract award will allow the City to proceed with the necessary pavement maintenance, enhancing road and pedestrian safety, improving traffic flow, and extending the lifespan of the roadway infrastructure,” Ladd wrote.

Ladd told the council on Aug. 6 that the seven bids the city received for the project were opened on July 8, with Granite Construction coming in with the lowest bid, $1,105,885.25. The city engineer had estimated the project at $1.2 million.

“They were really tight bids and we were happy to see that they were a little bit under our engineer’s estimate,” Ladd said.

“We are excited to move this project forward,” Ladd added.

He said it’s being funded with American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds that the City Council had previously approved for this project.

“We already have some of the improvements in progress that are separate from the ARPA funds,” said Ladd, explaining that all of the components will go together as one cohesive project when both projects are complete.

“This is a really big deal for us,” City Manager Kevin Ingram told the council.

Originally, the city had broken the project up into three pieces, but the ARPA funding is allowing them to address it altogether, which is much more cost effective, Ingram said. In context, it kickstarts other projects, and along with a large water and wastewater replacement project that’s in the works will provide noticeable improvement for the city’s roadway system.

He said the city is seeking the community’s forgiveness because they are going “to make a little bit of a mess” as the projects move forward, especially when they dig into the road to replace the water and sewer mains for the upcoming water and wastewater replacement project.

Connected to the South Main Street pavement project is a sidewalk improvement project, which Ingram said will put another half million dollars into pedestrian improvements and result in continuous sidewalks along that corridor.

Ingram said the city received public comment about not including a bike lane, and he said the issues with a bike lane and rehabilitation are not mutually exclusive. “I would argue that this project does put us closer to having that wider conversation.”

He said establishing a bike lane needs to be part of a larger kind of community outreach process, because “we only have a limited amount of real estate there on the road.”

Mayor Michael Froio asked Ladd if the city would have to remove the center turn lane on South Main Street if bike lanes were installed.

Ladd said there are several options. “Removing the center lane would be one of them.”

He said the city is in the middle of an active transportation plan that is going to give design alternatives not only on that segment of South Main but for the entire corridor.

“We're not going in and buying anything. We're stuck with what we have,” as far as the amount of space on the road, Froio said.

Ladd pointed out that the right of way acquisition for this project was incredibly small and yet took several months to complete.

“I'm confident we're gonna get there,” said Ingram. “And it's going to be better by having it looked at from a whole corridor perspective rather than just these ones.”

He added that if the city made any rash decisions on adding bike lanes, “and did anything crazy like limiting parking, this room would still be full.”

Ingram said there is a lot of money available now for bike and pedestrian improvements, and the city plans to capitalize on that.

Froio said that the project is not repaving but a pavement maintenance project, and he asked Ladd to explain the difference.

Ladd said a complete reconstruct would go several feet into the base throughout the entire span of the paving. This project is more of a “mill and fill” with specific dig outs that go deeper into the road base in specific areas.

He said it’s an almost identical project to one they did on North Main between Fourth Street and Clear Lake Avenue a couple of years ago.

Councilman Brandon Disney moved to approve the project, with Councilman Kenny Parlet seconding and the council approving the motion 5-0.

In other business at the Aug. 6 meeting, the council honored retiring Police Chief Brad Rasmussen, who then administered the oath of office to his successor, Dale Stoebe. The article on that event is here.

The council also approved an ordinance amending the municipal code to create a ministerial approval process for lot line adjustments, adopted the resolution to confirm and approve the utility billing delinquency list, also directing staff to submit the list to the County Auditor-Controller’s Office for inclusion on the property tax roll.

Froio was appointed the council’s delegate for the League of California Cities Annual Conference to be held Oct. 16 to 18, with Costa the first alternate and Disney the second.

Following council communications, in which Parlet gave a nearly 10-minute statement on COVID-19 being a hoax, the council went into closed session to discuss labor negotiations and an existing opioid lawsuit.

After they emerged, City Attorney David Ruderman announced that there was no reportable action on the labor negotiations. However, on the issue of the city’s existing litigation against Amerisourcebergen Drug Corp., staff was given direction to seek leave to amend the complaint to name an additional defendant, Indivior Inc., relating to the company’s involvement in marketing and distributing opioids.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 16 August 2024