Reply to If your parent recently died (estate planning)

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "If your parent recently died (estate planning)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My spouse and I experienced the deaths of all four of our parents over the last several years. One set of parents had set up a trust with all records easily accessible. The other set had a very simple will.

The estate of the parents with the trust was easy to settle. The siblings simply divided everything into equal portions and the sibling who was executor distributed the funds. There was a little bit of confusion about the personal property and some tax issues with the estate, but those were solved pretty easily. The entire estate was settled within four, maybe five months. The trust was private so there was no court involvement.

The other estate had to go through probate, which meant court paperwork and oversight. In some ways, this was a good thing because the person who was executor has some mental health issues and was having difficulty doing the job, but refused to let anyone help in a way that was actually useful. Discussions of deadlines the court required helped the executor to move along a bit, but it took a very long time to get the executor to make any distributions at all. It has been over three years now and the estate has still not been fully distributed and closed.

So I would say that a trust is a good idea if your adult kids are mature and trustworthy. It can be a quick and private way of handling your estate. If you have any reason to be concerned about the tustworthiness of one or more of your kids, a will that has to go through probate can be a better choice. Wills filed in court are public, so everyone involved can keep an eye on the progress.  The oversight provided by the probate court can also help to keep the executor on track, and hopefully, honest. [/quote]

You should not be blaming the executor for the fact it has taken three years for probate to close. I am the executor for my mom's estate. I am a year in. Our estate lawyer told us the whole process would take about three years.[/quote]

Interesting. I have discussed this with the lawyer who did the estate plan for my spouse and me and she thought that over three years for such a simple estate was really too long. The executor here is holding on to assets and not answering questions about them. I can see how a complicated estate could take longer to settle, but this is a fairly simple one.

My personal learning from this experience is that if you have any reason all to think any of your kids is not completely trustworthy, I would go with a will that needs to go through probate. And get everything in order while you are still young enough to be fully mindful of what you are doing. The parents in the scenario above had some level of cognitive decline which was taken advantage of by one of their children. Get everything set ahead of time with a lawyer who can take you through the best ways to handle things for your own situation. 
[/quote]

Agree with this 100%.

Also, the amount of time it takes to close the estate greatly depends on the jurisdiction and the complexity of the estate. I've handled several estates, and the time frame varied from months to 3 years.  In the latter case, it was both he slowness of the probate court in that jurisdiction, plus complex assets and tax issues. Some states are so slow (looking at you, California) that trusts make a lot of sense, but otherwise, they are generally not worth the effort, especially if there are family conflicts that make the oversight of probate court beneficial. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics