Separation and divorce have, perhaps obviously, potentially adverse effects on estates and the probate process. Regardless of when it occurred. Both are fraught with emotions and complications that tend to linger for years. Along the line, promises are made, between the exes, with the children, som...

Here's a quick story. A father runs a successful farm. He and his wife have two children, both boys, a couple of years apart. The boys grow up, go to college, go on to solid careers. Mom dies, dad remarries. The boys, now in their late forties are not happy. Dad, though, is. The boys never accept th...

We were looking back on some of the probate cases we've written about over the last year and, sure enough, one of them had a significant update in the last month or so. It casts the spotlight on the duties of executors/trustees. It is the Alan Thicke estate. You may recall that Alan Thicke died sud...

You hear about simple wills all the time. Usually, it means someone executed ‘just’ a will, a will that took care of everything without the need for trusts. You know, simple. We find that a lot of people also think: simple will, simple probate, no problems, no worries. It’s a natural enough as...

We just did a Facebook post about an article in the Washington Post last week about Prince's estate - it was the two year anniversary of his death last Sunday. The title was: What would Prince want? A really evocative headline, to be sure. Prince, as you know, died unexpectedly and without a will....

We did something we never do last week, we posted a story on Facebook that had nothing to do with probate ... but everything to do with families. It was a story in Golf Magazine, of all things, about the man who just won The Masters, Patrick Reed.  It detailed a series of family events over the ye...

You hear about simple wills all the time. Usually, it means someone executed ‘just’ a will, a will that took care of everything without the need for trusts. You know, simple. We find that a lot of people also think: simple will, simple probate, no problems, no worries. It’s a natural enough as...

What about a probate case where the deceased was a French citizen living in the United States for tax reasons who left a California will bequeathing his French property to his fourth wife? Now add this - that will disinherited his two children from his first wife, a violation of French law, and the ...

A big probate story out of California this week has been all over the news. It's a bit different and certainly highlights some very common probate themes in a very unorthodox way. There's - apparently- very few assets to value, no operating business, perhaps no real heirs, probably no will. There i...

We haven't talked about relatives in awhile. That hit home seeing some write-ups of the recent release of the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairies books - you know, the books the TV series was based on. Not exactly an article that would normally make one ...

HBO's Six Feet Under was one of the most acclaimed TV shows in recent memory, though somewhat under the radar, obscured a bit by the big hits like The Sopranos and Mad Men. It's the story of a family owned funeral home. Each episode began with a death, the deceased would end up at the Fisher Funeral...

How important is the handling of debt during the probate process? Well, let's put it this way, probate courts probably wouldn't exist as we recognize them today if it weren't for the question of debt after death. Wills have been around since ancient times. They go back to the Greeks and Romans. One...