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Does my will have to be probated? Your will does not have to be probated unless you have assets that are just in your name alone by having a will designating, the beneficiaries does not avoid probate. What avoids probate is titling your assets with a beneficiary designation or holding those assets jointly. So whether or not your will has to be probate depends on whether or not you die owning any assets that are titled just in your name. Most of the time that I see is it’s real estate that is in the decedent’s name and there’s no beneficiary designated on the deed. So to avoid probate, you can do estate planning. So if you have any questions about probate or how to avoid probate and estate planning, call me at (727) 847-2288.

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Does revocable trusts need a trust account or bank account? The answer to the question is yes. If you have an account that you want controlled by your trustees, you need to by your trust, you need to name,  to set up the account and your name as trustee of your particular trust. The reason for that is, is if it’s just in your individual name, then the provisions, the trust do not apply. So sometimes you see people that have set up a wonderful trust and it says everything. And the idea is to avoid probate, but they don’t turn around and retitled their assets and their name is trustee under their trust. So whenever they pass away, you have to go through a probate process to get an order for the assets to go to the trust and then have the trust, distribute the assets, which defeated the whole purpose of setting up the trust to avoid probate. So if you want assets to be controlled,  by your trust, you need to title them in the name of your name as trustee under your revocable trust and name your as trustee and name your trust in the, how you title the asset for it to be controlled by the, the provisions of your trust. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.