In Michigan, when someone dies without known heirs, a private attorney is appointed by the probate court to administer the estate and compensated from its assets. No family member stands across from them at the billing table. No adversarial party challenges the fee petition. The court that approves those fees typically appointed the same attorney. This is not a design flaw introduced by a bad actor. It is the design.
Michigan’s county public administrators are private attorneys who simultaneously hold a public trust appointment and run private law practices. Both functions generate fee income from estate administration work.
MCL 700.3203 triggers public administrator authority after 63 days with no heir petitioner. Once active, there is no adversarial party to challenge fee petitions, asset valuations, or the pace of estate closure.
Attorney fees in PA-administered estates are paid from estate assets and approved by the probate court that made the original appointment, creating a structural approval loop with limited external review.
In 2019, AG Nessel relieved four Southeast Michigan public administrators with tenures of four to thirty years. The cited reason was a service reevaluation, not documented misconduct. No discipline record was issued. Affected attorneys retained access to individual case appointments from the same probate courts.
Michigan’s current probate accountability legislation addresses guardianship and conservatorship for living individuals. No companion bill specifically targets decedent estate administration by county public administrators.
How the Appointment Works
Michigan’s Estates and Protected Individuals Code (EPIC) establishes a priority order for appointing a personal representative to administer a decedent’s estate. Family members come first. Then devisees, then creditors’ nominees. At the end of that list, codified at MCL 700.3203(g), sits the state or county public administrator. Their authority activates when 63 days have passed without anyone higher on the list coming forward, when the decedent died with no known heirs, or when no US-resident heir or beneficiary holds a distributive share in the estate.
The State Public Administrator Act authorizes the Michigan Attorney General to appoint private attorneys in each of the state’s 83 counties to carry out this function on behalf of the State Public Administrator. The county public administrators serve at the pleasure of the State Public Administrator, a position held within the AG’s office. They have authority to manage the determination, collection, liquidation, and distribution of assets in estates where there are apparently no known heirs.
The AG’s current roster of county public administrators is publicly posted on the department’s website. Appointment years on that list range from 1982 to 2024. Several attorneys have held continuous appointments for more than two decades. One has held an appointment since 1982.
The AG’s appointment system operates county by county. In practice, most Michigan counties have a single active public administrator at any given time. That attorney serves as the default for all heirless estate work routed to the public administrator in that county, for however long the appointment holds.
The Dual Role and What It Creates
The AG acknowledges the dual nature of these appointments in its own press materials. County public administrators are described as attorneys who “often also have private practice responsibilities that are separate and unrelated to their appointment.” That framing is accurate in a narrow transactional sense. The PA role handles deceased estates. The private practice handles other clients and matters.
What that framing does not address is the incentive structure that the dual role creates within the estate itself. A county public administrator administering a heirless estate is not a neutral steward with no stake in the outcome. They are a private attorney who generates fee income from estate assets, under an appointment that came from a probate judge in front of whom they regularly appear, with no opposing counsel and no client who will survive to complain.
When there are heirs, that dynamic is constrained by people who have something to lose and the legal standing to object. When there are no heirs, that constraint disappears. The estate belongs, ultimately, to the state through escheat. The Michigan Department of Treasury receives whatever remains after the administration is complete and fees are paid. Treasury is not present at the fee petition hearing.
The PA attorney files a fee petition with the probate court. The probate court reviews and approves it. The probate court made the original appointment. In counties where a single PA attorney has held the appointment for years or decades, the same judge may have reviewed and approved that attorney’s fee petitions across dozens of estates.
That is not inherently corrupt. It is structurally insufficient. Familiarity is not accountability.
One Fee Stream, No One to Object
Michigan probate law permits attorney fees to be paid from estate assets. This is a standard provision, applicable across all estate administration and defensible in contexts where family oversight is present. The structural problem in heirless estates is that the PA attorney may bill for both the personal representative function and the legal counsel function against the same pool of assets, with no adversarial party positioned to review either line item.
Fee petitions in probate cases are public court filings. Any person with sufficient knowledge and time can review them. The issue is not formal access. It is the absence of anyone with both standing and incentive to do so. The AG’s Public Administration Division monitors certain estates where the department is identified as an interested party under the Michigan Court Rules. It does not conduct systematic fee audits across all PA-administered estates in all 83 counties on an ongoing basis.
Beyond ordinary fees, probate courts may award extraordinary fees for services such as selling real property, handling litigation, or other complex administration tasks. Those requests go to the same court for approval. In long-running administrations where no adversarial party is present, there is no external benchmark for what constitutes extraordinary, what it is worth, or how long it should take.
Estate administration involving real property and bank accounts typically runs between 12 and 24 months. Some run longer. The fee meter runs throughout.
Clutch Justice works with cold case nonprofits, wrongful conviction organizations, documentary researchers, and families navigating active matters to build the record when institutions won’t. Pattern recognition, procedural abuse mapping, document forensics.
See Consulting Tracks ?The 2019 Signal That Went Unnamed
In August 2019, AG Dana Nessel’s office relieved four county public administrators of their appointments. The four were Robert Kirk, who had held the Macomb County appointment for 30 years; John Yun, who had held an Oakland County appointment for 18 years; Thomas Fraser, who had held an Oakland County appointment for 14 years; and Jennifer Carney, who had held an Oakland County appointment for four years.
The AG’s stated reason was not misconduct. The press release cited a fresh look at service delivery following an elder abuse listening tour. No public disciplinary findings accompanied the action. None of the four faced Attorney Grievance Commission proceedings arising from the termination. No ADB record was created.
That framing has a structural consequence that deserves examination. An attorney terminated from the AG’s PA roster for undisclosed reasons, following an elder abuse listening tour, exits the macro appointment system without a public misconduct record. Under Michigan probate practice, probate courts retain authority to appoint any qualified attorney as a personal representative in specific cases on an individual basis, outside the AG’s appointment pipeline. A Michigan probate firm noted in 2025 that many attorneys continue to receive individual appointments from the same courts that previously relied on them, even after termination from the AG roster.
If four PA appointments of long standing, one stretching back three decades, warranted reconsideration after an elder abuse listening tour, what specifically prompted that conclusion? The public record does not say. That absence is itself a structural data point: the system that terminated these appointments produced no public accounting of why.
The 2019 action is also evidence that the AG’s oversight mechanism functions reactively, in response to external input, rather than through any proactive monitoring program designed to surface fee irregularities before they compound across multiple estates.
National Context: The Structural Risk Is Not Michigan-Specific
The structural conflict embedded in Michigan’s model is not unique to Michigan. In Nevada, the public administrator’s office became the subject of national attention in 2022 when former Public Administrator Rob Telles murdered journalist Jeff German, who had been reporting on Telles’s mismanagement of the office. In 2026, a Nevada probate commissioner found that a separate administrator candidate had eroded the value of estates he administered through self-dealing and had perpetrated a fraud on the court and on heirs. The Nevada Legislature subsequently passed legislation changing the manner in which individuals are appointed to administer estates.
Nevada’s response was driven by events that reached crisis level before producing reform. Michigan’s oversight gap does not require a crisis to be worth examining. The structural conditions that produce abuse in this system are documentable in advance of the abuse. That is precisely what makes structural analysis useful.
What the Reform Debate Is Missing
Michigan’s current legislative attention to probate accountability has focused on guardianship and conservatorship for living incapacitated individuals. Legislation introduced in the Michigan House of Representatives would, among other things, require that professional guardians and conservators be appointed only when the appointment is in the ward’s best interests and when no competent, suitable, and willing person is available to serve. Companion bills address guardian and conservator duties and appointment procedures.
Those proposals address a genuine and documented problem in Michigan’s guardianship system. They do not reach decedent estate administration. Requiring that a living person’s guardian be appointed only as a last resort does nothing to constrain what a county public administrator bills against a heirless estate where no living person holds standing to object.
The reform gap is specific and addressable. It does not require new institutions or novel legal theory. It requires applying the same accountability logic to deceased estates that the Legislature is already applying to living wards.
Mandatory fee reporting. County public administrators should be required to report all estates administered and all fee petitions filed to the AG’s Public Administration Division on an annual basis. That data does not currently flow to the AG systematically. It cannot be audited if it is not aggregated.
Random sample audits. The AG’s division should have authority and funding to audit a random sample of PA-administered estates annually, reviewing fee petitions, asset valuations, and administration timelines. Audit costs should be recoverable from administration funds, not from separate legislative appropriations.
Appointment tenure limits. Uncapped appointments of 10, 20, and 30 years create structural loyalty between individual attorneys and individual probate courts. A reasonable tenure cap, with reappointment requiring affirmative AG review, would disrupt that dynamic without preventing experienced practitioners from serving.
Role separation. The same attorney should not bill both the personal representative function and the legal counsel function against the same heirless estate without independent review of the combined billing. A neutral auditor, appointed by the court and paid from estate assets above a defined threshold, would provide that check.
Public court record review. Fee petitions in probate cases are public filings. Advocates and journalists can access them through the probate court in the county where the estate was administered. A systematic FOIA-equivalent request for fee petition data by county is a viable investigative starting point before any legislative remedy is in place.
Quick FAQs
What is a Michigan county public administrator?
A county public administrator is a private attorney appointed by the Michigan AG to administer the estates of decedents who die without known heirs. MCL 700.3203 triggers this appointment authority after 63 days without a family petitioner. The attorney is compensated from estate assets and serves at the pleasure of the State Public Administrator within the AG’s office.
Why does the dual role create a structural conflict?
The same attorney who holds the public trust role of administering the estate also generates fee income from that estate’s assets. When no heirs are present, no party with standing can review or object to fee petitions, asset valuations, or administration timelines. The only check is the probate court, which is typically the same court that approved the original appointment.
What happened with the 2019 terminations?
AG Nessel relieved four Southeast Michigan county public administrators in August 2019, citing a service reevaluation following an elder abuse listening tour. No public misconduct findings were issued. The terminated attorneys faced no discipline record and remained eligible for individual case appointments from the same probate courts through channels outside the AG’s appointment pipeline.
What legislation addresses this gap?
Michigan probate reform legislation has focused on guardianship and conservatorship for living incapacitated individuals. As of this publication, no Michigan legislation specifically addresses oversight of county public administrators in decedent estates where no heirs are present. The reform gap is unlegislated.
- MCL 700.3203, Priority Among Persons Seeking Appointment as Personal Representative. Michigan Estates and Protected Individuals Code (EPIC). Michigan Legislature. legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-700-3203.
- Michigan Department of Attorney General, Public Administration Division. County Public Administrator roster and division description. michigan.gov/ag/about/bureaus-and-divisions/environment-government-operations-bureau/public-administration-division.
- Michigan Department of Attorney General. “Michigan AG’s Office Relieves Four Southeast Michigan Public Administrators of Their Appointments.” Press release, August 23, 2019. michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2019/08/23/michigan-ags-office-relieves-four-southeast-michigan-public-administrators-of-their-appointments.
- Michigan Department of Attorney General. “Randi Merchant Appointed as Michigan’s Public Administrator.” Press release, May 19, 2023. michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2023/05/19/randi-merchant-appointed-as-michigans-public-administrator.
- Michigan Department of Attorney General, Elder Abuse Task Force Newsletter, Issue 9, September 2023. References pending Michigan House Bills addressing guardianship and conservatorship reform. michigan.gov/ag/initiatives/elder-abuse/elder-abuse-task-force/eatf-newsletter-issue-9-september-2023.
- Paquette Law. “Public administrators, how your estate may end up under their control.” August 21, 2025. paquettelaw.com/public-administrators-how-your-estate-may-end-up-under-their-control. Documents Michigan-specific practice regarding continued probate court appointments following AG roster termination.
- Nevada Current. “Telles associate, real estate agent removed from probate case, among Dems for public administrator.” May 8, 2026. nevadacurrent.com. Documents Nevada probate administrator self-dealing findings and subsequent legislative reform.
- Michigan House Bills addressing guardianship and conservatorship reform were referenced as pending in the AG’s September 2023 Elder Abuse Task Force newsletter. Current legislative status as of this article’s publication date should be verified directly with the Michigan Legislature at legislature.mi.gov.
Bluebook: Williams, Rita. No Heir, No Adversary: The Structural Conflict Built Into Michigan’s Public Administrator System, Clutch Justice (July 23, 2026), clutchjustice.com/2026/07/23/michigan-public-administrator-probate-oversight-gap/.
APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, July 23). No heir, no adversary: The structural conflict built into Michigan’s public administrator system. Clutch Justice. clutchjustice.com/2026/07/23/michigan-public-administrator-probate-oversight-gap/
MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “No Heir, No Adversary: The Structural Conflict Built Into Michigan’s Public Administrator System.” Clutch Justice, 23 July 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/07/23/michigan-public-administrator-probate-oversight-gap/.
Chicago: Williams, Rita. “No Heir, No Adversary: The Structural Conflict Built Into Michigan’s Public Administrator System.” Clutch Justice, July 23, 2026. clutchjustice.com/2026/07/23/michigan-public-administrator-probate-oversight-gap/.
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