How Long Does Probate Take?
Video Summary
How long does probate take? Well it doesn’t take six years and the lawyers don’t wind up taking 80 percent of the money and the government taking the other 20 percent, so the beneficiaries get nothing.
The usual time period or, in fact, the judges require probate administrations be closed out in a one-year period or the lawyer who is handling the estate needs to give an explanation to the court as to why the estate is still open after one year.
There is a short form of probate called a summary administration that can be used and a probate administration can be concluded in approximately 30 to 45 days or even sooner than that. That’s if you have assets of less than $75,000 which would exclude the homestead property and that there’s no creditors. Then you can file for a summary administration and have the assets passed to the heirs.
If you have creditors or other problems, different assets, multiple beneficiaries and have to open up a formal administration with assets in excess of $75,000 or any number of creditors that’s called a formal administration and in a formal administration you have to run a notice of creditors, and that creditors period runs for three months from the date the first publication in the newspaper is published, and so the estates usually will be open from four to six months.
Now a lot depends on the beneficiaries. If the beneficiaries want to fuss about this and start being hard to get along with or they don’t agree, i.e. a non-functional family and want to fight about it, well, all bets are off as far as how long it’s gonna take to resolve the estate.
One of the other things that’ll keep an estate open is this real estate market and trying to liquidate real estate, and that’s another problem, or dealing with various assets, or even recovering all the assets also takes some time.
So there’s any number of factors that go into the time period in order to probate an administration, probate an estate, so but the rule of thumb is if you have a formal administration you’re probably looking four to six months. If it’s a relatively simple estate it should be closed out in a year.
If the parties want to fuss and sputter about it well then you’re looking at spending a lot of money and the lawyers will take all the money while the parties want to fight over furniture and pots and pans or – and so it’s not good when we fight. So if you have a functional family it should be wrapped up and board at 12 months. If you have a question about probate please give me a call at (727) 847-2288, thank you.
What Steps Should I Take If I Want To Buy A Business?
Video Summary
What steps should I take if I am considering buying a business? Be very careful. (a) whenever you buy a business or are considering buying a business, first thing that I ask the people is whether they’ve had any experience in a particular business so that they know what they’re looking for and that every business is unique.
I know particularly the restaurant business or the delicatessen business, the bar business, there’s all sorts of things that unless you’ve been there you don’t have any ideas of what the problems could be as far as a business is concerned and that’s true about any business. So if you don’t have any experience and a going concern be very, very careful.
You need to hopefully work in the business for a period of time so that you can get the expertise and know any problems that are associated with it. So that is huge as far as (a) having the expertise as far as running the business once you purchase it. Also, you need to be sure you review the books and records of the business and do a due diligence as far as that’s concerned.
You need to be very concerned about key employees, making sure that they don’t leave and there goes your book of business as far – whatever business it is and they go out on their own if there are key employees.
So you need to, whenever you locate a business you need to then prepare a contract which will give you the opportunity to exercise due diligence and if you would like to come in and speak to me about what all you need to do to buy business I’ll be happy to discuss it with you and work on preparing the contract but a lot of it has to do with your area of expertise and your ability to know what to look for in any particular business. If you have any questions give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in LLC's and Corporations, Videos
What Steps Should I Take When I Want To Form An LLC?
Video Summary
What steps do I take when I want to form an LLC? Well, the first thing we need to talk about is, Why are we forming an LLC? Presumably, the purpose of doing this is to try and protect your personal assets from the business liability so that if your business gets sued that they can’t take any of your personal assets.
Now an LLC is different than a – it’s sort of a hybrid between a partnership agreement and a corporation and it does afford the parties limited liability; however, it is a little more complicated than a corporation since you don’t necessarily have officers and directors and they have particular duties.
In an LLC you have managing members or a managing member and that’s all designated under an operating agreement. The operating agreement designates what each party is supposed to do and also it shows who is the ownership interest in an LLC.
Now any number of people that I see come in and say, “Oh, I have an LLC,” and I say, “Well that’s just terrific, can I see your operating agreement?” and their eyes glaze over, roll in the back of their head and they don’t know what I’m talking about. So I say, “Well, who owns that?” “Well, I do,” or they tell me who it is. “Well, where is that,” because that’s what the operating agreement does. It lets you know who owns it. It’s sort of analogous to a corporation whenever you don’t issue any stock.
Well who owns it, you know, if you don’t have any shareholders, well, nobody owns it. So with an LLC it’s fairly complicated. For that reason I suggest that whenever you’re talking about setting up an LLC let’s talk about why you want to set it up and the advantages of an LLC versus a corporation.
So if you have a going concern a corporation is probably much easier to handle and to be in – affords you more liability protection than an LLC, particularly if you are a single member LLC. If you’re the only one interested there’s been several cases that says well, they can get your personal assets or go through the – get the LLC assets for your personal debts.
So before you jump into an LLC or go on-line and set it up I suggest that you might want to think about setting up an appointment and let’s talk about setting up an entity that will accomplish what you want because, if you simply set up a corporation, don’t issue any stocks, well, you may not have afforded yourself any protection from your creditors’ claims, and if the corporation gets sued then you may be personally liable for the assets. So if you have some questions about setting up an LLC or corporation, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in LLC's and Corporations, Videos
Ask Thomas Mitchell: How Can We Pay For My Relative To Go Into A Nursing Home?
Video Summary
Good afternoon. I’m Tom Mitchell, one of the partners of Waller & Mitchell, and one of the things that I do is practice elder law, and one of the main questions I get fairly frequently about elder law is, “I have a family member who’s going to a nursing home. How are we going to pay for it?” And that’s a serious question with nursing home costs running anywhere from $6,000.00 to $8,000.00 a month.
There are some public assistance programs to help pay for the nursing home care of an individual, and that’s the government that we’re talking about so they define indigency a little bit different than you and I do.
For a married couple the spouse who’s staying at home can have approximately $120,000.00 of liquid assets. The spouse going into the nursing home can only have $2,000.00 of liquid assets. The spouse going into the nursing home also cannot have monthly income of more than $2,025.00 a month. If there is more income than that, we have to set up a special trust to capture that income and pay it to the spouse or the nursing home.
Basically what happens is the nursing home spouse’s income is paid first to the spouse staying at home to make sure they’re not impoverished. Then the nursing home person gets to keep $35.00 for personal expenses – toothpaste, hairbrush – and then the balance of the income is paid to the nursing home. The rest of the expenses of the nursing home is paid by the state through the Medicaid Program.
So there in a nutshell is how you can help pay for the nursing home care of an individual in your family who may have to go.
Once again, this is Tom Mitchell, one of the lawyers of Waller & Mitchell. Our telephone number is 727-847-2288.
- Published in Medicaid Planning, Videos