Counsel to the Public Administrator
Richard T. Kerins, partner of the firm is counsel to the Nassau County Public Administrator. Mr. Kerins is the former Public Administrator of Nassau County. While Mr. Kerins served as Deputy Public Administrator from 1988 until 1999 and as the Public Administrator from 1999 to 2001, Lawrence Mahon and Kenneth P. Mahon served as his counsel. Accordingly, the expertise of the firm in cases requiring the appointment of the Public Administrator as a fiduciary is unparalleled.
The Public Administrator’s primary duty is to administer estates that would otherwise remain unadministered; to protect the decedent property from waste, loss or theft; make appropriate burial arrangements when no close relative is available to make the decisions; conduct thorough investigations to discover all assets; liquidate assets at public sale or distribute assets to heirs; pay the decedent’s bills and taxes; and to locate persons entitled to inherit from the estate and ensure that the legal distributees receive their inheritance.
The Public Administrator handles estates in several instances, including but not limited to, the following:
- when no one else is available to handle the estate
- whenever there are no known heirs
- when the executor or administrator of an estate becomes ill, dies, is convicted of a felony or otherwise disqualified from serving while administering an estate and no one else is available
The Public Administrator is involved in the following types of cases:
- Administration proceedings or probates in which there is no one qualified to serve as a fiduciary.
- Wrongful death proceedings or personal injury actions in which the injured party died and there is no one qualified to serve as a fiduciary.
- Guardianship proceedings of the property of infants and adults who are under a disability.
- Estates under section 1211 of the Surrogate's Court Procedure Act.
- Creditor's petitions in which a defendant in a lawsuit has died or a decedent was entitled to a Medicaid Fair Hearing.
