Sec. 1. 18-A MRSA §3-706, as amended by PL 1979, c. 690, §§8 and 9, is further amended by adding at the end a new paragraph to read:

If a personal representative fails to file an inventory or fails to include in the inventory property that the court determines should have been included, in determining the value of the uninventoried or missing property, the court may rely on the opinion of qualified appraisers or owners of similar property who have never seen the missing property, and doubt created by the absence of such property and its unavailability for purposes of appraisal must be resolved in favor of responsible persons estimating the highest reasonable value.__ When there has been no inventory filed and interested persons allege under oath or affirmation that property should have been inventoried but is now missing, the burden is on the personal representative to show that the property should not have been included in the inventory.

SUMMARY

This bill provides that, if a personal representative fails to include property in an inventory of a decedent's property, the Probate Court, in determining the value of that property, may rely on the opinion of qualified appraisers or owners of similar property. The bill specifies that doubt created by the absence of the property must be resolved in favor of persons providing the estimate of highest reasonable value. The bill also places the burden on the personal representative to show that the property should not have been included in the inventory.