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.
How Do I Close A Credit Card Account of a Deceased Person?
Video Summary
How do I close the credit card account of a deceased person? The first thing I’d suggest you do is to cut the credit card in half, and then if you have a death certificate, send a death certificate to the credit card company or possibly call and advise them that the person is deceased. Some of the other considerations, when dealing with credit cards, you need to see if there’s another user, as far as that’s concerned. And so, or, or if it’s a debit card, there’s a bigger problem where all they need to have is the, the code. And they can use that to access a bank account but any event, you need to determine whether or not there’s another person authorized to use the account. And, also who is liable on the account who signed that. So if it’s just in the decedent’s name, well, that’s, my suggestion is to notify the credit card company, cut the card in half, and hopefully they’ll freeze the account. So no one else can use the account after his death. And also if you’re an heir or whatever, you do not have any liability for that credit card account. And if there’s no estate, the credit card company does not get paid. So if you have any questions, as far as probates concerned and credit cards will give me a call at (727) 847-2288.