Canadian estate, executor USA permanent resident

[wcj1]

My spouse's mother passed away this year. She was a Canadian citizen who passed away in Canada.

Her assets (Canadian bank accounts and retirement/investment accounts) will be distributed to her child (my spouse/a Canadian citizen and a USA permanent resident) and her grandchild (Canadian citizen). My spouse was named executor/personal representative and started taking actions as executor before we realized the USA residency might complicate things.

But based on this, can anyone say that if the estate is made up solely of Canadian financial accounts, but the executor is based in the USA, does the estate need to file a tax return in the USA (since the only thing USA about this situation is the physical location of the executor).

My spouse and I have always filed our own taxes, since our finances are simple, and while he is working with his mother's Canadian accountant to file the Canadian return, we think this might be outside of his scope.

Thank you.

[nelsona]

No US return needs to be prepared.

However, any inheritance that either of you or your child, which exceeds US$100,000 need to be reports on a 3520 form.

Technically, since she has control over this foreign estate (which is a foreign trust) she is supposed to produce a 3520 trust report for the estate that she controlled, but I have not heard of anyone having any issues if they do not. But that is the main reason why US persons that are children of foreign parents should NOT be executors of their estate.