Who Are the Parties That Have to Be Involved Going Through the Florida Probate Process?
Video Summary
Who are the parties that have to be involved going through the Florida probate process? Well, first you have the beneficiaries, whoever is named in the will. They need to be involved as far as the process is concerned, then you, if there’s no will involved, well, then you need to determine who the heirs are. Whether they have children, deceased children, grandchildren, and if they have none, then who the parents are to determine who the beneficiaries of the estate are. So those are all folks that need to be involved with the probate of a Florida probate. Then you also have the personal representative, whoever has been named as the executor. We now call them personal representatives. So they’re involved in the process and that they’re the administrator. They take care of paying for the creditors claims and distributing the assets, liquidating the properties in order to make distribution or distributing the assets in kind.
Then you have the creditors and that the creditors need to be paid before there is a distribution of the assets of the beneficiaries. You also have the judge who supervises the probate administration as far as requiring inventories and accountings and taking care of any contested matters between the beneficiaries or, if the personal representative is not doing their job, removing them. And then the clerk of the court who is short of the gatekeeper to the judge and then to submit the paperwork to the judge, they review it and then send it on to the judge to be signed. Usually you do not have to appear in court in a probate proceeding unless it is a will contest or there is litigation involved. So if you have any questions about probate or need an estate, probated will give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
How Long Does the Florida Probate Process Take from Start to Finish?
Video Summary
How long does the Florida probate process take from start to finish? The court requires the states to be closed within one year from the time that they are opened. However, you can petition to ask that the estates be that time be extended. The minimum time for handling a formal administration is four months. And that once the estate is open, you must have a statutory period for creditors’ claims, which runs for three months after the first publication in the newspaper. So it’s hard to, you can’t close it before the time period for the creditors period expire. So it’s probably at least a minimum of four months to try and say that all the states can be handled or close within that one-year period. It depends, it’s not necessarily, feasible a lot, has to do with what kind of assets that you have and how complex the will is. And the cooperation of all the parties involved. Many times, we have problems collecting money from banks and it gets dragged out for some time trying to collect all the assets or even determine what assets are involved. So, the time period from start to finish depends upon the, the assets and the parties involved. So, if you need to have an estate taken care of, well give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
Is Retirement Income Taxable to a Beneficiary?
Video Summary
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.
- Published in Estate Planning, Taxes, Videos
Is It Ever Too Late To Start The Florida Probate Process?
Video Summary
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.
- Published in Estate Planning, Probate, Videos
How Do You Avoid Probate For Florida Property?
Video Summary
How do you avoid probate for Florida property? Well, let’s first talk about how the property is titled first. Let’s talk about personal property, such as bank accounts, and also the relationship of the parties. If you’re married, you just put the assets and your joint names as husband and wife, that would be particularly if you want your husband or wife to receive it upon your death. So that would be the easy answer to most of it. And that would avoid probate when the first spouse passes away. And particularly if you have all the assets titled as husband and wife, if you’re by yourself then the options, as far as bank accounts are concerned, you can set those up as payable on death so that they would pass to the beneficiary, whoever you wanted to go to at your death. The same things with a brokerage account where you have stocks and bonds with Merrill Lynch or any other, ag Edwards or, Raymond James, you can have a designation that says it’s transfer on death or a TOD designation.
I don’t know what this inquiry had to do with real estate, but with real estate if you just have a few people that you wanted to go to equally, we can do what they call a Lady bBrd deed, which is called an enhanced life estate deed. And that’s where you executed deed, conveying the property, who are, you want to receive a debt, your death, but you receive all retain all the rights of ownership during your lifetime. And that way you can sell it, keep all the money. You can change the beneficiary anytime you want. And it doesn’t create a problem for Medicaid. It preserves all your rights as far as homestead property. If you’re dealing with your homestead property and it’s referred to as Lady Bird, deed, and at that’s how it appeared in a treatise, probably 25 or 30 years ago, where the author named all of his documents after famous people and it’s named after Lady Bird Johnson. So if you have any questions about needing to have a lady bird deed prepared will give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Probate, Real Estate, Videos