Can a Portion of a Will be Invalid
Video Summary
Can a portion of a well be invalid? The answer is yes. it can be. One of the reasons I primarily see it being invalid is whenever you make out a will, husband and wife and you leave everything to your spouse, and then you later get divorced, the law provides that, portion of the will, where you left everything to your wife is ineffective. A divorce interprets the will as if the ex-spouse predeceased you. And it would go to the alternate beneficiaries. Another reason is, if you put some provision in your will as to your homestead property, and you don’t leave it outright to your spouse, or if you have minor children, you try and devise it to someone. That portion of your will may be invalid since the Florida constitution governs who you can leave your home to, what you can leave to and to whom. And so, that may be another reason why a portion of the will would be invalid. Another one, which we don’t see very often is whenever you have a device against public policy, an example of that says, well, I leave, $10,000 to my daughter provided that she does not get married. And so that would be a, the buys would still be valid, because that would be a provision against public policy. So if you have any questions, give me a call its (727) 847-2288.
What Makes Will Invalid?
Video Summary
What makes a will invalid? The primary reason why a will may not be valid is because it has not been executed in the presence of two different witnesses and in the presence of the person making the will. That person’s called a test dater and all three persons have to be present and sign in the presence of each other for the will to be valid. There are other reasons that a will, can be invalid as if the person does lacks the mental capacity to make a will. And that’s a very low threshold and that they only need to know who their relatives are and what kind of assets which they own in order to be able to make out a will. The third way to that a will, may be invalid is if it was procured by undue influence. In other words, someone made them or influenced them to make a, will naming them, usually the influencer as the beneficiary of the will. So those are the three primary reasons for why a will would be invalid. If you have any questions about that, you can give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Probate, Videos, Wills
How Do I Determine If a Deceased Person Owns Property?
Video Summary
How do I determine if a deceased person owns property? Well, of course the most logical place to start is go through their documents, whatever paperwork they left behind, go through it and see if you can find tax bills, account statements, insurance policies, whatever. And see if you can’t find something there, if you can’t find it there, then the next step is, I would check the tax rolls for whatever county in Florida that they live to see if there’s any property, title in name, which would be another indication of, of what if they owned any real estate in the particular county where they died, or if they moved from another county in Florida, you might want to check the tax rolls. There. That’s an easy way to do that. Otherwise, if you come up empty with all of that, can, if you want to spend the money spend between 20 $503,000, you can hire, a firm to do an asset search, nationwide, which would show all the bank statements and, brokerage accounts and real property. Basically what creditors use they order these searches to see if a debtor owns any assets and where it is, but you can use it for a state tax purpose or state purposes, not a state tax purposes, but a state purposes, in order to open a probate. But it’s a substantial investment to try and find out what assets that the decedent owned. So if you have any questions, give me a call. It’s (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Probate, Videos
Should Bank Accounts of the Deceased Person Be Closed Immediately Upon Death?
Video Summary
Should a bank account of the deceased person be closed immediately upon death? First off is we would need to determine whether or not as a joint account, if it’s a joint account, particularly between husband and wife, I do not suggest that it be closed immediately. The reason for that is if a check comes in payable to the decedent, you need to have some place to deposit it so that you wouldn’t have to go through a probate proceeding in order to cash the check. If however, the account is just in the decedent’s name, I suggest that you may want to deliver a death certificate to the bank and ask them to freeze the account. You would then need to go through a probate proceeding in order to close the account and collect the proceeds. So if you have any questions about how to collect the money from a decedents bank account, give me a call at 727) 847-2288.
Who owns the personal possessions of a deceased person?
video summary
Who owns the personal possession of a deceased person? The probate code provides that the surviving spouse is entitled to $20,000 of household, personal property furniture, furnishings things such as that, plus, two motor vehicles. So if you have a probate proceeding that is considered exempt property, unless the property’s been specifically devised, if there’s no surviving spouse, well, then it goes to the children of the decedent and that they’re entitled to the $20,000 of furniture and furnishings and the two motor vehicles. The usual scenario that I hear, however, someone passes away. They don’t, the only thing that that’s available are the automobiles and, and the household furniture and furnishings. And, even if they have a will, they’re not going to go through probate because everything else is already was jointly owned or had been transferred outside of probate with the beneficiary.
So that present the problem, a functional family, you can get the children together and they can have the automobile transferred into their names or designate who they wish to have the automobile transferred to, on the furniture and furnishings. They can sort it out amongst themselves. When we have a dis functional family it’s problematic because it’s sort of the, I call it the U-Haul effect, whoever gets there first with the U-Haul wins because you don’t have a probate proceeding and if items are missing well, how do you prove what’s missing? What was given away beforehand? And furthermore, what’s the value and, and who took, who hauled it off. So in my career, I’ve never had a probate proceeding just for untitled personal property. So, hopefully you can work this out if there’s no probate proceeding amongst those files or the children. So if you have any questions about exempt property, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.