MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission presided over the administrative closure of 197 estates during Wednesday’s regular meeting.
The closures are the result of a state law passed earlier this year aimed at getting inactive estates off the books.
According to the law, an estate can be closed administratively if there is no activity for three years after the administrator or executor takes the oath of appointment.
Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney previously said her office has “thousands” of estates that qualify for administrative closure. This first batch, she explained, only dates back to 2015.
All told, 230 estates met the criteria for administrative closure. Of those, parties connected to 32 estates asked for removal from the list. An additional estate was removed during Wednesday’s public hearing.
Blaney said everyone connected to the estates was notified twice via first class mail and notice of the public hearing was published in this newspaper.
The next round of administrative estate closures will come before the commission in January.
Blaney previously said going back through the old estates has increased the work load on her office staff substantially.
The commissioners said they appreciate the efforts.
“I do want to thank you, Carye, for your guidance through this. Again, this is a new process. It’s going to have some wrinkles and it’s going to take some work, but we’ve got the best clerk in the state to shepherd us through that,” Commissioner Sean Sikora said.
Also on Wednesday, Commission President Tom Bloom said the county is excited to host an information session on Friday regarding Project Mountaineer — an effort to expand West Virginia Auditor J.B. McCuskey’s financial reporting initiative to municipalities through the state’s agreement with software provider OpenGov.
Monongalia County was the fist county in the state to get on board with the effort. According to Bloom, the county would like to strengthen those ties even more.
“We do know the company [OpenGov] is looking for a regional office on the east coast, so we’re going to put in our bid,” Bloom said.
Lastly, the commission signed a proclamation declaring October Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Representatives from the Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center were on hand to receive the proclamation.
