Estate Administration & Probate

As we've made clear in innumerable posts, it's of vital importance for people from all walks of life to have an estate plan in place. Indeed, doing so can help ensure that assets are distributed in accordance with exact wishes, tax consequences are minimized, children...

The court-supervised process of transferring a deceased person’s assets to a set of people entitled to them is known as probate. There are multitudes of ways in which an estate can be administered when an individual passes away.Several states in the U.S. have a...

As you may have surmised, those individuals appointed to serve as the executor of an estate are tasked with a myriad of responsibilities from identifying and preserving the assets of the deceased to providing notice to creditors.Yet another of the executor's primary...

In today's post, we'll conclude our ongoing discussion of how advanced directives -- living wills, health care surrogate designations and anatomical donations -- provide much-needed clarity for those family members facing the sudden incapacity of a loved one.To recap,...

In a series of ongoing posts, our blog has been exploring the topic of advance directives, meaning those legally binding documents setting up a health care plan to commence in the event of the creator's incapacity.Specifically, we spent some time discussing how the...

Last time, we started discussing how taking the time to plan for your potential incapacity can serve to create greater clarity for your family members and, more importantly, reduce the potential for costly and emotionally draining legal proceedings related to your...

While most of us associate estate planning with ensuring that our assets are distributed in accordance with our exact wishes and in the manner best suited to minimize taxes, the truth is that it encompasses much more.Indeed, comprehensive estate planning also includes...

While the idea of owning more than one piece of real property may seem imprudent to the more fiscally conservative among us, the fact remains that a very large number of people own multiple properties not just in their home states but across the nation. Indeed, they...

What happens to assets with designated beneficiaries after a divorce? The answer, in many cases, is nothing. Unfortunately, this is a common problem area in estate planning.After a divorce, an individual may update his will to change bequests, but those statements...

What happens when non-probate assets do not have a named beneficiary? They might wind up back in probate. For example, life insurance and retirement accounts generally transfer to the named beneficiary. If no beneficiary is named, however, a court may be tasked...