When someone passes away, you may think that their family is immedaitaly entitled to their assets or things. This isn’t always the case. Most of the time, their assets have to go through what’s called the probate process.
What’s the probate process? It’s a legal process where the court steps in to help settle the persons affairs. This includes determining what they own, if they owe any debts and making sure what’s left goes to the correct people.
This process looks differently depending on whether your loved one had a will. If they did have a will, the court has to verify, approve and supervise the distribution process. What if your loved one didn’t have a will? Now the state determines who inherits what.
Probate is far from a simple and quick process. At a minimum, the process takes around six to nine months. Bigger estates and contested wills can take a year, or longer. During this time, most of your loved ones assets will remain locked up. This means that if bills become due during this time, the family may have to cover these out of pocket while they wait.
Probate is also far from cheap. When dealing with courts and law firms, there are filing fees, court costs and attorneys fees. These add up. Typically, these costs come out of the estate, meaning that there is less left over for the beneficiaries in the end.
Finally, probate is far from a private process. Anyone whose curious can look up the file and see what your loved one owned, who received what and how much their estate was worth.
You’re probably thinking that you would like to avoid this process at all cost, right? One of the best ways to do this is with a revocable living trust. All of their assets (homes, bank accounts, life insurance policies, etc.) get placed into a trust and don’t go through the probate process. This usually keeps thing quicker and more private.
Another way to avoid probate on certain assets is by naming beneficiaries on using Georgia’s transfer-on-death designations, also called lady bird deeds.
With all of that being said, probate isn’t always a nightmare, but it is slow, public and can be expensive. With the right planning, it’s mostly avoidable.
We can help you put that kind of plan in place.
