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.
What Does it Mean to Record a Satisfaction of Mortgage?
Video Summary
What is the significance of recording a satisfaction of mortgage? Well, the significance is it means you paid the thing off and so that’s just terrific! And so by recording a satisfaction, the lender signs it and you put it in the public record that shows that the mortgage is no longer a lien against your property. Many people talk about taking a name off of a deed or satisfying a mortgage, the way the official record books operate is you put documents in the official record books and you never take them out, and so then you simply file another document to show a change in the chain of title for whenever does a title search.
So by recording a satisfaction of mortgage, it shows in the public records there’s no longer a lien, and they usually state that the debt has been paid in full. Certainly if you do pay your mortgage off, you’ll want to obtain the promissory note and ask that it be paid because it is considered sometimes a negotiable instrument so that’s important to have. But the satisfaction of mortgage indicates that there’s no lien on the property and does indicate that the lender has probably been paid in full. Hopefully you have a satisfaction of mortgage that you need to record, but if you have any questions about it, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
Thank you.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
Introducing…Jaleh Piran – Vesseh!
Video Summary
Hi! I am Jaleh Piran-Vesseh and I am the newest associate at Waller & Mitchell. My primary practice involves real estate litigation, both plaintiff and defense work. I love practicing law because at the end of the day, I love helping people.
If you have a legal question or would like legal advice, please feel free to give us a call at 727-847-2288.
Thank you so much.
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
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