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
How Long Does Probate Take?
Video Summary
How long does probate take in Florida? Wow. That’s a loaded question and it’s very hard to give a general answer to that since you need to look at whether there are a well or not, whether we have know how many beneficiaries are involved and what’s the nature of the assets as far as that’s concerned. So to try and give you a general idea, what it is, the rules of court indicate that the probate administration needs to be concluded within one year. If not, you need to file something with the court, explaining to the court, why the estate administration’s taking longer than one year. An example of that in the event, there was any litigation. So if it is a relatively simple administration where the assets and you have the designated beneficiary stocks and bonds and bank accounts or real estate I would usually tell the client that hires me, that you’re probably looking between six to nine months to probate the estate.
And in order to have it concluded and in the assets liquidated or distributed to the beneficiaries, there are several types of probate administration. There is a summary administration. So if there if the assets are less than $75,000 and arrangement have been made to satisfy their creditors you can file a summary administration and have it distributed directly to the beneficiaries. And that proceeding usually only takes about 30 days. Once you file it with the court, when you have smaller estates, there’s other procedures that can be followed where my it’s still a probate proceeding, but you really don’t have to, it’s short form and just submitted to the court. So, I hopefully gave you some idea, some guidance, although I didn’t really answer the question on how long it takes. It depends on the beneficiaries, the assets, and what’s involved. If you have a probate issue or an estate will give me a call and I’ll be glad to talk to you about it at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Probate, Videos
Is Florida Probate Administration Always Required?
Video Summary
Is probate, Florida administration always required? No, it’s not required. Whenever someone passes away, the first matter that you would have to determine as to whether or not you have to probate someone’s estate is whether or not they have any title assets or just in their name alone. So that they’re not jointly held with someone, or they don’t have a designated beneficiary. Many accounts are set up with a payable on death, on your bank account. So those would not have to be probated. Certainly joint accounts would not have to be probated, securities or brokerage accounts that have a transfer on death would not have to be probated life insurance with a beneficiary, doesn’t have to be probated, IRAs and annuities, they all have beneficiaries. So, none of those have to be probated. Also, if the automobiles are going to children or there’s no will, the children can have an automobile to automobiles transferred in their name because they’re considered an exempt asset by going to the property appraiser’s office, excuse me, the tax collector’s office, who is an agent for the department of motor vehicles and have the vehicle titles transferred into their name.
So, a probate administration not necessary unless there are assets that are just titled in the deceit’s name. If you have any questions about this, Give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
Are Retirement Accounts Considered Part of an Estate?
Video Summary
Are retirement accounts considered part of an estate? They’re not part of a probate administration, an estate. And that, IRAs are usually the retirement accounts we’re talking to and, or 401ks. And so, they’re not considered to be a part of the estate since they usually designate a beneficiary. And so, then all you need in order to, if you’re one of the beneficiaries is to present a death certificate to whoever is managing the IRA, and then they should give you the options. There’s usually options from taking the full lump sum and you can maybe defer or spread it out over the time period. So, they usually have designations one. The problem that we’ve encountered is, as we know, there’s an IRA, but we don’t know who the beneficiaries are because there’s no documentation, the estates records and the banks, or whoever has it, many times will not discuss the amount or let you know who the beneficiaries are. So, it’s important that if there is an IRA, that there is some documentation to show who the beneficiaries are. So that person, the beneficiary can present a death certificate to the custodian or the person who is handling the IRA or 401k. So, if you have any questions about it, we’ll give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
Where Does the Money Go if No Beneficiary Is Named On My Deceased Spouse’s Bank Account?
Video Summary
Where does the money go if no beneficiary is named on my deceased spouses bank account? The bank does not release the money to anyone without a court order. If it remains dormant for a long period of time, they may eventually turn it over to the state as unclaimed property, depending on the size of the bank account. You can go to the court if it’s less than the amount of your spouse’s funeral bill and ask the court to disperse it to you. If you paid the funeral bill, that’s called a distribution without administration need the death certificate and you need the paid funeral bill, as well as the bank account statement. If it’s less than $10,000, there’s another procedure for small estates, wherein you could have the money dispersed to you. If it is larger than that, well, then you would need to go through a probate proceeding and whether there’s a will or not a will. So that would be a probate proceeding. So what happens to the account? Nothing until you get a court order or, you have a probate proceeding and the bank receives instructions to deposit or send you the personal representative, a check. If you have any questions, give me a call at (727) 847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Probate, Videos