What Is The Difference Between Formal Administration And Summary Administration?
Video Summary
What is the difference between a formal administration and a summary administration? Well first, both of those are probate proceedings and that’s probably a four-letter word to most folks in that they don’t want to spend any money on lawyers or pay the government any money. A lot of that has been blown out of proportion, I think, over the years by the Reader’s Digest where they say that the government takes half the money and the lawyers take the other half, and it takes them six years to do it. In Florida, that is not the case. First, there are no estate taxes in Florida and furthermore the attorney fees can be negotiated. The statutes suggest that an attorney fee for handling an estate is 3% of the assets that are being probated and that usually has to do with the formal administration.
Formal administration is when you have creditors and you file a notice to creditors send it to the creditor and give them a period of time, which is three months from the date you first sent out a notice of the publication of creditors, and they can file their claims in the estate. So the personal representative will pay the claims and then the administration costs. There are no taxes unless your estate is in excess of $5 million dollars and then they distribute the balance of the money to the beneficiaries.
There is a short form of administration called a summary administration and that’s available when the assets that are subject to probate are less than $75,000 and some provision has been made to pay any creditors or there are no creditors involved. Usually this is done for a flat fee rather than based upon a percentage. If there’s homestead property and it’s passing to the various children or heirs of the decedent, that’s not counted toward the $75,000. Usually those fees are in the neighborhood of about $2,000 or $2,500 in attorney fees for summary administration plus the court costs.
So a formal administration will take probably four to six months and here again the attorney fees will be in the neighborhood of 3% of the assets with certain minimums of about $3,500 plus court costs. So if you need to have an estate probated, give us a call at 727-847-2288 and we’ll be glad to discuss what the fees will be, how long it will take and what assets are subject to administration. The big thing is to do some planning ahead of time to avoid having to worry about probate, so here again, give us a call at 727-847-2288.
Thank you.
Ask Thomas Mitchell: How Have Medicaid Qualifications Changed in 2013?
Video Summary
Good afternoon, I’m Tom Mitchell. I’m one of the partners here at Waller & Mitchell. We’re located in downtown New Port Richey, Florida. I’m going to speak to you this afternoon for a few minutes about Medicaid. Medicaid is a joint federal/state program which provides for the medical care for a variety of individuals who are needy. It’s a welfare stop program so it does have asset and income qualifications.
The first group of people that it provides benefits to are families with children, and those benefits are limited to those individuals who make less than 185% of the federal poverty limit. Currently this year, for a family of four, that’s about $40,000 so if they’re in a family of four, mother and three children, father and mother and two children and make less than $40,000 they would qualify for Medicaid. A family also can be more than just a mother and/or father. It can include people such as grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, so it’s a wider-ranging program.
The next group of people who can qualify for Medicaid are the elderly, those over the age 65 – aged, as they’re referred to in the federal regulations. So if you’re up there and you’re 66 and you don’t think of yourself as aged, just take my word for it, that’s what the federal regulations say. If you’re over 65 and you are needy, that is you have income that is less than $710 a month, you can qualify for a program called Supplemental Security Income. If you receive at least $1 of Supplemental Security Income, you are entitled to Medicaid benefits and you can have your health insurance paid for by the government.
The other group of people that we frequently encounter that requires Medicaid services are the elderly who are in need of nursing home coverage. This program provides that the state will pay for the nursing home care of an individual who is impoverished. Now this is the federal government and these are the people that pay $2,000 for coffee pots so they have a little bit different idea about what constitutes impoverished. For a single individual it’s pretty straightforward. They can’t have any more than $2,000 in the bank and can’t make any more than $2,135 a month. If they do make more than $2,135 a month, we can prepare a special trust to qualify them in any event, and if you need that, please contact me. I’ll be glad to do that for you.
In the situation with a married couple, the rules are that we don’t want the couple to be in poverty. If we know that one of them is going to be in the nursing home, so they’re called the nursing home spouse. The other spouse is called the community spouse because they’re still living at home in the community, and in that situation, the community spouse is entitled to have $116,550 of assets exclusive of the house and the car. The spouse who’s in the nursing home, however, can only have $2,000 and can’t have income over the $2,135 that I mentioned a moment ago.
If you meet those qualifications, the government will pay for the nursing home care of an individual who requires it. There are some ways to plan and to qualify sooner rather than later and this is something that we do do at Waller & Mitchell. If you need this service, please feel free to contact me. Again, my name is Tom Mitchell. I’m one of the partners at Waller & Mitchell. Our telephone number is 727-847-2288.
Thank you.
- Published in Medicaid Planning, Videos
How Can an Attorney Help Me if I’m in Danger of Losing My Home?
Video Summary
How can an attorney help me if I’m in danger of losing my property to foreclosure? Well, the first thing that an attorney can do who does foreclosure defense is to explain to you the system or what’s going to happen. Information is power, and that way, you can then make some informed decisions as to what you want to do and how you wish to deal with it and what risk you have. Many times, I listen and it bothers me when people say, “Well, I’m behind on my mortgage payments and I’m just gonna walk away from the property.”
Well, that’s probably the worst thing that anyone could do because then the property is subject to being vandalized and the value of the property goes down and nobody is a winner. So I think it’s important to understand how long the process takes, as well as what the consequences are. Also, people are concerned whether or not they’re going to have a judgment entered against them where the bank can take their assets or bank accounts and immediately want to start talking about bankruptcy.
Well, there is a lot of other options involved and some lawyers who do foreclosure defense can give you an idea of whether or not banks are even pursuing a money judgment against you. Right now, foreclosures are taking probably nine months to a year. So why would you want to move out and start paying rent if you could stay there, and if you’re not making your mortgage payments, maintain the property and then when it gets a little closer to being foreclosed out, you can – or having to move when the foreclosure process is over with go rent a piece of property. The rent’s right, just stay right there and then you can start building up a reserve in order to be able to afford another place to go.
So a lawyer primarily can give you your options and talk with you about what you want to accomplish, whether you want to stay in your home, whether you want to try and get a mortgage modification or whether you want to avoid a deficiency judgment. All of these things are what a knowledge lawyer can help you with. So if you have questions about a mortgage foreclosure or you’re in danger of your house being foreclosed upon, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
Thank you.
- Published in Real Estate - Foreclosure, Videos
What are the Implications of a Mechanic’s Lien on My Home?
Video Summary
What are the implications of a mechanic’s lien on my home? Well, they can be pretty severe because the way you enforce a mechanic’s lien, they are now called construction liens in that they’ve changed the name of these liens several years ago, but they are foreclosed upon. And so the implication is pretty severe. However, the construction lien foreclosure process is somewhat complicated and there are certain deadlines that have to be met in order to enforce a construction lien or have severe ramifications.
Something that I run across routinely is, if someone files a lien against your property and they think well, now that’s going to get me paid. Well, a construction lien or a mechanic’s lien must be foreclosed upon within one year of the date that is filed, and it cannot be renewed. So many times, I advise people rather than you spending a lot of money when you don’t believe the lien is justified, just wait, if you are not going to mortgage your property or sell it, and that way, the person usually does not file a construction lien unless it’s a build or there’s a substantial amount of money involved.
So construction liens must be foreclosed in order to be enforced, and if they’re not foreclosed upon within a one-year period, they are no longer a lien against the property. The people who are entitled to lien your property are people who have done improvements or material men such as the general contractor, his subcontractors or suppliers who have supplied the materials that are incorporated in your home. If you have a problem with a construction lien or a mechanic’s lien, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
What is a Partition Action?
Video Summary
What is a partition action? That’s the name of a lawsuit where you want to force the sale of property that you have an interest in. So if you only have a very small interest, say usually it’s a half interest or a quarter interest, and it’s usually a family matter where the family has inherited a piece of property from mom or dad and we have two or three sisters and they can’t seem to agree on what to do with the property. So one of them decides, “Well, I want to force sister out of the house since she’s living there and she’s not taking care of it and I just want my money.”
They then contact an attorney and say, “What can I do about that?” And I say, “Well, you can file a partition action.” And a partition action says that you have an interest in the property. You have to name all the other people who have an interest in the property and say that you want the property sold. And then there’s two ways to do it, you can either have it sold just like a foreclosure sale by the clerk’s office with an auction, although usually that doesn’t bring a very good price, or you can ask to have it be sold at what they call a private sale and that’s where you usually have a realtor sell the property.
So with a partition action, you ask that it be a private sale and then have a special magistrate appointed, which is usually a local attorney who then takes care of listing the property, and then once he has a contract, petitions the court for the courts approval of the contract and then he can sell the property and doesn’t need the signatures of all of the participants in that he is directed to sell the property. And so he sells the property and then divides up the money to everyone’s particular interest.
In addition to being able to get your percentage share of that money, you can assert that you have what they call a special equity. Let’s say that you’ve been paying all the taxes on the property for the past several years and the other owners of the property haven’t contributed. So you can assert that you have a special equity in the proceeds. Also, a little tougher situation is when one of the owners is living on the property, the other owners can assert that they want a reasonable rental value for their share of the proceeds.
So it’s a little bit complicated as far as sorting out who gets the money. But the partition action allows one of the property owners to force the sale of the property. And I find that it’s a very effective tool in getting the people to negotiate some sort of buyout or getting the property sold. So if you need to get some property sold and you can’t get along with the brothers and sisters or the co-owners, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288 and we’ll file a partition action.
Thank you.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos