What Is a CPS?

The House Is the Easy Part

When a family reaches us about a probate sale, the property is rarely what's actually hard. What's hard is that someone died. That there's a will, or there isn't. That siblings who haven't spoken in years now have to agree on something. That the executor lives in Arizona and the house is in Wanaque and it's full of forty years of a life.

The CPS — Certified Probate Specialist — is training for exactly that intersection. Real estate knowledge, yes. But specifically applied to a situation that's legally complex and emotionally loaded at the same time.

That deserves its own space, because of who tends to be reading this. Sometimes it's an executor who hasn't told their siblings they're looking into options yet. Sometimes it's an adult child trying to understand what's ahead before a parent has even passed. Sometimes it's someone in the middle of a family disagreement who just needs one conversation that isn't loaded.

A conversation is a conversation. It isn't a commitment, and it doesn't go anywhere.

Working Alongside the Attorney — Not Instead of One

This distinction is the whole thing. A CPS doesn't practice law and doesn't replace your estate attorney. What the training provides is fluency in how the process runs, so the real estate side can move in step with the legal side instead of waiting on it.

Practically, that means understanding what has to happen before a home can be listed versus what has to happen before it can close — and getting the marketable, sellable pieces ready while the paperwork moves. That parallel track is where months get saved, and every month a vacant house sits, the estate is paying for it.

We've written the New Jersey process out in full, plainly: selling an inherited house in New Jersey — including the inheritance tax lien that catches families off guard.

When the Family Doesn't Agree

Chopper puts it plainly: there's always something with someone, one way or another, and we deal with it.

That's honest. Multiple heirs, competing opinions about price, one sibling who wants to keep it and one who needs the money — it's common, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Nobody can promise to resolve a family dispute. What genuinely helps is unglamorous: getting everyone the same clear information at the same time, in writing, so the conversation is about facts instead of assumptions.

Sensitivity matters here too. These conversations touch grief, money, and old history all at once, and the person handling them should know that going in.

If You're Just Starting

There's no rush and no pitch. If you're at the beginning of this and want to understand what's ahead, that's a conversation whenever you're ready. And it stays between us.