Category: Estate Planning & Probate

You can contest a will only if you have standing, and standing means you’d be financially affected by the outcome: you’re an heir who would inherit if the will were thrown out, or a beneficiary under an earlier will who was cut out of this one. Being a relative isn’t enough. Being disappointed isn’t enough.…

Does a joint bank account override a will? In nearly every state, yes — a joint account with right of survivorship passes to the surviving owner automatically, and the will never touches it. That surprises families constantly. A parent writes a will dividing everything equally among three children, adds one child to the checking account…

How probate works is simpler than its reputation: a court supervises the transfer of a dead person’s property to the people entitled to it, after the debts are paid. The process exists because someone has to be given authority to sign for a person who no longer can, and creditors and heirs both need a…

The will vs trust question comes down to one difference that matters more than the rest: a will goes through probate and a trust doesn’t. Everything else, privacy, cost, timing, incapacity planning, follows from that. A will is a set of instructions the court carries out after death. A revocable living trust is a container…

What does an executor of a will do? In practical terms, the executor, called the personal representative in many states, closes out a dead person’s financial life: locates the assets, pays what’s owed, files the tax returns, and hands the remainder to the people the will names. That takes months at minimum and often more…

When someone dies without a will, state law writes one for them. Every state has an intestate succession statute that sets out who inherits and in what shares, and it doesn’t ask what the person would have wanted. It asks who the surviving relatives are. A surviving spouse and children take first, in proportions that…