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Who will serve as the personal representative, if there is no will, well, it will be more than likely one of the children of the decedent. In order to be appointed as the personal representative, you need to have the majority and entrust degree or consent to your appointment. So if there are three children, well, we need two out of three to agree one person. If there can be no agreement, then anyone can petition say why they’re qualified as a child, and then get formal notice to the other children as far as, being for them to object. And so if they don’t object, well, then they would be appointed. The court would then decide if there’s an objection, may require a bond or a higher bond, if it is a contested matter. But usually I find that we can find a, the majority of the beneficiaries are agreeing on one person to serve. If you have a question about handling the probate and when there’s no will involved, well give me a call at (727) 847-2288.

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Is retirement income taxable to a beneficiary? I’m assuming that retirement income is coming from an individual retirement account or an IRA. If it is, then it may not be taxable. If it comes from an Roth IRA account, those, uh, distributions are not taxable. Uh, as far as they’re just not taxable. If it’s not a Roth IRA, then the money received from a retirement income is taxable. And so you do have to pay tax on whatever the distributions are. There are usually various options as to how you can take that. If someone passes away and you inherit an IRA, whether or not you can defer that or take it in a lump sum, depends on what type of IRA is involved. As far as retirement income is concerned as to whether an audit is taxable. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.

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Is that ever too late to state to start the Florida probate process answer is no. That after two years, the creditors no longer have any claims against the estate. So if you started after that time period, you could possibly file with the call of some rent administration, since there’s no creditors involved and you can have it distributed directly to the, to the beneficiaries, the assets of the, of the decedent. So it’s not too late. The law, as far as real estate is concern, is that the title real property vests the incident of death and the beneficiaries subject to being divested through a probate administration, which would have to do with payment of creditors and administration costs. So if you wait for more than two years, well, then the only thing you need to worry about is paying for the administration costs as far as that’s concerned. So if you have  a decedent’s passed away many years ago, and you need to probate their estate, well, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.

How Long Does Probate Take?

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How long does probate take in Florida? Wow. That’s a loaded question and it’s very hard to give a general answer to that since you need to look at  whether there are a well or not, whether we have know how many beneficiaries are involved and what’s the nature of the assets as far as that’s concerned. So to try and give you a general idea, what it is, the rules of court indicate that the probate administration needs to be concluded within one year. If not, you need to file something with the court, explaining to the court, why the estate administration’s taking longer than one year. An example of that in the event, there was any litigation. So if it is a relatively simple administration where the assets and you have the designated beneficiary stocks and bonds and bank accounts or real estate I would usually tell the client that hires me, that you’re probably looking between six to nine months to probate the estate.
And in order to have it concluded and in the assets liquidated or distributed to the beneficiaries, there are several types of probate administration. There is a summary administration. So if there if the assets are less than $75,000 and arrangement have been made to satisfy their creditors you can file a summary administration and have it distributed directly to the beneficiaries. And that proceeding usually only takes about 30 days. Once you file it with the court, when you have smaller estates, there’s other procedures that can be followed where my it’s still a probate proceeding, but you really don’t have to,  it’s short form and just submitted to the court. So, I hopefully gave you some idea, some guidance, although I didn’t really answer the question on how long it takes. It depends on the beneficiaries, the assets, and what’s involved. If you have a probate issue or an estate will give me a call and I’ll be glad to talk to you about it at (727) 847-2288.

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What legal documents should everyone have? One, I think of the top of the list is you need to be sure that you have government issued identification such as a driver’s license or an ID card issued by the same as a driver’s license. I don’t know if the department of motor vehicles issues those, but have an ID because you’ll need that. No matter where you go to cash checks or any number of places as far as your estate planning documents, I think everyone should have a living will that would direct whether or not you want life support to be discontinued. If you have a terminal condition, permanent vegetative state or an end stage condition, it really is important. I think that you have a healthcare surrogate or where you designate a healthcare proxy to be able to make medical decisions for you and also have a HIPAA waiver so that they can check on you to find out how you’re doing as far as if you are hospitalized, although you may not be dying like you would be using a living will also consider particularly if you’re by yourself rather than a husband and wife situation is to giving someone that you trust, hopefully a child or a loved one that you consider, or really trust a durable power of attorney who would be able to take care of business for you. And it’s called durable sense. It would be in the event you no longer had capacity. It would also be good to have a birth certificate and if you’re have a marriage license, particularly,  for the ladies or the spouses, if you change your name, I think that’s a problem. Whenever you go to have your driver’s license taken care of, if you happen to be divorced and I have a copy of your divorce decree or decrease on the appropriate marital settlement agreements that go with those, if you have any unrecorded agreements. If you’ve entered into a contract with a lease to purchase property, it’s important that you have a copy of the signed documents or the signed documents. If you have promissory notes, are any unrecorded, a legal document that has to do with your rights to collect money or you owe money or you’re purchasing property or leasing property, those would all be documents that you should have in your possession. You have any questions about that will give me a call at (727) 847-2288.