Probate: More Costly than Just Shelling Out Money

You know you are not immortal. You also have enough sense to know you can\’t bring your property to heaven. Hence, you figure out how to apportion your estate to the people you love. Now, you need to have knowledge of estate planning; otherwise, your estate may be subject to probate when your time comes.

What is probate? It is a court procedure wherein the estate of a person who died are parceled out, first, to the creditors, then the remaining to the beneficiaries of the estate. In the process, a court makes an inventory of the estate of the deceased, then pays off creditors and other debts. Then, the remainder is distributed to the deceased\’s designated inheritors.

If you think probate is costly, you are certainly correct. There are fees to be paid. To name a few, there are court fees, attorneys\’ fees and the fee for the executor. The latter is the person designated by a tribunal to supervise the liquidation of the estate. There is also the matter of the probate fee, whose rate also varies in proportion to the size of the estate. The rate may be substantial — as much as 10% of the assets. And who pays for all these? In effect, the heirs. After all, the fees will be taken from the estate. So, if the beneficiaries anticipate a certain windfall, they should expect something much, much less.

The costs in probate procedures go beyond dollars and cents. Time is gold and probate takes so much time. If you know that probates are managed by the courts, then you realize how laggard the pacing of probate is. If your heirs are lucky, the process can be done in six months. The usual situation is one to three years. The process takes that long especially if your estate has some legal complications. Another reason for delay is the number of court cases in the probate process. Would you like your heirs to wait for three years before they can get their inheritance?

Lastly, one must factor in the loss of privacy. As the process is managed by legal entities, then all information and records become open for public scrutiny. The debts and other obligations of the deceased become public knowledge. So too is the parceling out of the estate to the named heirs. Thus, any citizen who wants to look up the records may discover that a lucky inheritor went home with Uncle Bob\’s prized heirloom, the Ferrari sports car and choice pieces of land. This is all in the name of transparency. With this openness, the heirs may be easy prey to people with criminal intent.

It\’s bad enough that probate costs money. The loss of time and privacy is intangible and immeasurable.

Visit this websitehttp://tompkins-law.com, to find more information about estate planning and probate. For more on probate, visit this page: http://tompkins-law.com/probate-attorney-orange-county

Probate: More Costly than Just Shelling Out Money