Hiring your lawyer on a contingency basis sounds like a great idea. Instead of forking over tens of thousands of dollars for a retainer and refreshing that retainer month after month after month, you simply sign on the dotted line and pay nothing. Well, nothing up front any way. Contingency arrangements allow you to hire […]
You can expect probate, the legal process of distributing and closing a deceased person’s estate, to take 12 to 18 months in California. California law requires the completion of probate within one year of an executor or administrator being appointed by the court to handle the estate. However, large or complex estates can take longer. […]
Probate is the court-supervised process for transferring legal ownership of a deceased person’s assets and settling their debts and other financial affairs. Probate may require paying debts and distributing the decedent’s assets according to their will or state default rules if there is no will. If no one files probate for an individual who has […]
Trusts Wouldn’t it be nice to combine the best features of joint tenancy with a Will? That’s where Trusts come into play. Trusts are now one of the most widely used devices to transfer assets from parent to child. Over the course of this series you are going to learn how Trusts are used, and […]
Shouldn’t it be easy if I want to transfer my property to my kids after I am gone? Whatever it may be: a house, savings, stocks and bonds. What does it matter if I use a Trust, will, or anything else? It should just pass to the kids. But passing assets to your children is […]
In our first post in this Trust Uses and Abuses series, we discussed the dreaded word: Probate. In this post we will explore why the court-supervised world of Probate causes anxiety when it comes to using Wills. Why all the fuss? Well as you might imagine, any process that requires court supervision is going to […]
Did you know that Trusts didn’t used to be so widely used? In fact, the widespread use of Trusts for planning the transfer of assets from parents to children is a fairly new development. It wasn’t that long ago that everyone passed their asset on to the next generation using the centuries-old method of Last […]
What is an heir-at-law? What does that term mean in California under the California Probate Code? When people die intestate, meaning they die without a will or a trust, their assets pass to their heirs. There are other instances where we might use the term “heir.” For example, oftentimes, we’ll say “all heirs at law […]
In California, most of our Trust laws, the laws that apply to Trustees, to Trust Administration, and to the distribution of assets to Beneficiaries, can be found in the California Probate Code. You can find the California Probate Code by going online and searching Google for California Probate Code. One of the websites you’ll find is […]
It sounds like a relatively easy question. At least in my mind it does. But the answer is a bit more complicated. An Estate can mean a lot of different things. People often think that their Estate is all of the assets they own. And that is one appropriate use of the word “estate”. Probate […]
