How do you convince a brokerage that never met your father that he actually lived where you say he lived, once he isn't around to confirm it himself? That was the wall I hit last fall, holding a single paper stock certificate for a long-dissolved railroad company that had been tucked inside an old almanac on his bookshelf. The shares were still valid and still frozen in his name, and the brokerage wanted proof of domicile before anyone could touch them. It's the kind of DIY probate snag that doesn't show up on any checklist until it's sitting on your kitchen table.
An Affidavit of Domicile turned out to be the fix, a sworn statement telling a bank or brokerage exactly where someone lived at the time of death, so the institution applies the right state's rules to the estate administration process. Think of it as a library card check for an estate: proof that the person belonged to this jurisdiction, not some other one. Before I opened a legal pad or touched the laptop, I tried a walk-in pro bono legal clinic near the Noblesville courthouse square, hoping a volunteer attorney could glance at the certificate and just tell me what to file. The waiting list ran three months out. The shares weren't going to sit frozen that long, so I went back to the kitchen table and pulled up LawDepot instead.
Why Indiana Estate Law Still Wants This Form
Probate rules aren't uniform state to state, and a brokerage has no real way of knowing which set applies without something sworn in front of a notary. A number of states have adopted the Uniform Probate Code to make the process more consistent, but Indiana runs its own version, which is exactly why the company wanted proof instead of taking my word for where Dad had lived. It isn't about doubting the family so much as the institution covering itself before releasing an asset.
The Paperwork to Pull Before You Log In
Before you open the LawDepot template, you'll want the deceased's full legal name, date of death, and Social Security number on hand, because the form asks for all three right out of the gate. You'll also need the certificate number and share count for whatever security is being transferred, plus real clarity on domicile itself, which isn't just where someone was staying but where they intended to remain. If the estate you're settling is small enough overall, it's worth checking whether a small estate affidavit covers what you need before you go through this route at all.
On the butcher-block table where most of this paperwork happens, I keep two red accordion folders, one marked MOM and one marked ME, so nothing from her estate gets mixed into my own filing. A legal pad sits next to the laser printer in the hall, and I work it from the bottom of the page up, crossing off each item the moment its form clears the tray.
Working Through the LawDepot Questionnaire
The first screens in LawDepot's questionnaire are the easy ones: your name as the Affiant, meaning the person swearing to the statement, and your relationship to the deceased. My mother was the one who'd eventually sign, since the shares were headed into her account, but I did the actual typing and answered for the details she wouldn't have known offhand.
Residency turns out to be where the form gets strict. It wants the exact duration in years and months, not a rounded guess, so swearing to "about thirty years" under oath is a bad idea when property tax records can hand you the real number in twenty minutes. I mentioned to Lenora, who's worked the reference desk next to me for years, that I was cross-referencing old tax bills against a deed, and she said something like "sounds like a Tuesday" without even glancing up from her cart.
Should You File the Minute the Form Is Ready?
Most speedy-probate guides push you to file everything as fast as possible, and for this particular form that's bad advice. Filing an Affidavit of Domicile before you understand the estate's full tax picture can flag a transfer before you're ready for the consequences. Indiana doesn't currently levy a state inheritance tax, but if the parent in question lived somewhere that does, mailing this affidavit early is effectively telling that state a taxable asset just moved.
Since the family's longtime CPA retired the same year, tax season became mine to sort out solo, and if a similar shuffle lands on you mid-transfer, my notes on how to file a tax extension online after your CPA retires might buy you room to get the domicile paperwork right before anything else hits your desk.
What a Properly Formatted Affidavit Should Include
The first time I trusted LawDepot with something that actually mattered, it wasn't this affidavit, it was a rental agreement for the tenant renting our basement. It printed clean on the first pass, no crooked margins, no reformatting, and he signed it before dinner that same afternoon. That's the bar I held this document to.
It held up. The preview listed the county and state of residence plainly, the securities described exactly as I'd entered them, and the penalty of perjury language sitting right where a notary would expect to find it. No padding, no filler paragraphs justifying a fee, just the facts a brokerage needed to release the shares.
Notary or Witnesses? What Indiana Estate Law Actually Requires
Banks and brokerages almost always want the affidavit signed in front of a notary before they'll act on it. That's a different bar than the one I dealt with drafting my own will, where Indiana wants two witnesses and skips the notary requirement entirely. For this particular form, the notary is the whole ballgame, and most branches will stamp it for free if you already bank there.
My neighbor Garnet found the flyer I'd left at the circulation desk and emailed the same afternoon, mostly wanting to know if LawDepot was one of those services that quietly charges you every month after you sign up. It isn't, not for a one-off form like this one. You build the document, download it, and you're done.
How Long the Bank Actually Takes to Process It
Once the notarized affidavit goes out with the original certificate, send it certified mail and plan on roughly a month before the brokerage finishes the transfer. Nobody working the phones there seems to know why it takes that long, only that it does. During that stretch I kept a dated copy of every version in the folder marked ME, because reprinting the same page twice trying to remember which copy has the embossed seal is its own special kind of wasted afternoon.
If a vehicle is tangled up in the same estate, the paperwork looks completely different, and I've written separately about how to create a bill of sale for a deceased parent's vehicle for whoever's dealing with that next.
None of this required a law degree, just patience and the discipline to check a number instead of guessing at it. The shares eventually cleared into my mother's account, and the certificate went back into the almanac, marked transferred instead of just old paper. If you're further along and filing a final tax return for a deceased parent online, having a clean stock transfer already logged makes that particular stack of forms a little less overwhelming. Estate administration doesn't get less tedious just because you skipped the retainer, but at least the tedium stays yours to manage from the kitchen table.