[GNC] Close books as FPOA, new books for Estate?

[Larry Baldwin]

I am in the same position / roles as you describe and managed the process as follows ( note Canadian based);


The bank / registered / non-registered accounts held under POA were frozen by the institutions at time of death (held until the institutions received Probate Certificate from the courts). I retained these accounts in the GnuCash file with existing balances. 

i) during the time between when the accounts were frozen and institutions approved the Executor request (about 10 weeks), the bank did allow for funeral and income tax expenses to be disbursed from the frozen accounts, and pension, government benefit cheques to be deposited. These transactions were recorded in the existing accounts managed under the POA.

ii) also during this time, there were bank fees, investment gains, etc which the bank transacted and I recorded against  the existing accounts managed under the POA. 


Once the financial institutions were satisfied I was the appointed Executor, they created a new Estate Account, calculated the ending balance in the existing POA account, and transferred this amount in to the Estate Account.

 Within the same  GnuCash file I created a new Placeholder Account - "Estate Accounts", and created a Bank Estate Account ( Parent Account being the Placeholder Account - "Estate Accounts" ) for each of the financial institutions..

i.e.       Estate Accounts
                - Bank A Estate Account
                - Bank B Estate Account
                - Bank C Estate Account


I created a transaction to transfer the Balance from the existing POA Account to the corresponding Bank Estate Account. The POA Accounts were 'Closed' in each of ther financial institutions. All recorded within the GnuCash file, 


I selected one of the banks as the prime estate account. I then transferred the balance of all other estate accounts into this prime estate account. All recorded within the GnuCash file, 



This has left me with one Bank Estate Account, where I record all remaining expenses, fees, income taxes, etc. and an accurate ending balance to be disbursed to beneficiaries.

Setting the accounts up this way, all in one file, helped in calculating balances for Probate Fees, various Income Tax reporting, and Ontario Estate Information amounts, helped in reporting financial information to the government and beneficiaries, and helped in reconciling all the financial accounts in to one manageable estate account
 


-- Larry --


> On Nov 18, 2025, at 4:42 PM, Bruce Griffis <bruce.griffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was the financial power of attorney for my mom for the past few years,
> and kept her finances in GnuCash. She passed away, so FPOA is no longer in
> effect. I am the executor for her estate. My thought is to duplicate her
> current GnuCash file, empty out the transactions, and start new with same
> chart of accounts and set opening balances to be what her balances were as
> of yesterday. Would that be the right way to handle this?
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