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 write a lot about estate disputes and litigation , , , because we are frequently involved in them. We have brought cases on behalf of beneficiaries and heirs and we have defended cases on behalf of the estate and/or executors. Every case is, of course, different, sometimes wildly so. They do shar...

Lawyers in estate planning and probate cases sometimes have a unique perspective on families and relationships. Not Tolstoy "every happy family" perspective, but a pretty in-depth perspective nevertheless. That is hardly a secret, it seems that families know it - or at least sense it - most of the t...

We, obviously I think, see a lot of disputes during the probate process. It's part of what we do day by day. We've been running a series of workshops lately with hospice workers all over the Greater Atlanta area. They ask a lot of questions about family disputes because they see it and they see the ...

A quick note about something that seems simple but always seems to get a big reaction at our workshops when we bring it up. It doesn't get laughs or comments, just a lot of people shifting in chairs and giving each other that ‘boy, have we all been through this’ look. That happens when we ta...

Over the last few weeks we've been posting about wills, probate, the disinheriting of family members late in a testators life.This is something that's been described as a nationwide epidemic and the source of more and more probate contests and straight out litigation. Our posts are filled with examp...

We're revisiting an earlier blog post about gifts. Gifting, bequeathing, leaving to a trust, donations to charity. Usually, there are only nice connotations attached to gifts. It is, however, a cold, hard fact that a lot of the time one person's gift is another's 'disinheriting'. We'll be writing ab...

Sometimes probate is all about trying to figure out the deceased's wishes. Sometimes people aren't all that clear with instructions, or identifying an asset, or a hundred other things. Then, it's up to the probate judge to try to figure it all out - with or without help. That's tough enough, but, of...

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 assumpti...

When a promise leads to a will contest, no one wins. That may seem obvious to us, here, now, from a remove, yet it happens over and over again. We have a friend who did some pretty involved business planning for a family owned business in the Northeast about five years ago. It was somewhat complica...

Modern families have, well, modern problems, especially where wills are concerned. Consider this case, happening in New York right now. Brownstones in the West Village section of New York City are worth a small fortune. Today, Fifty-five years ago they weren't - and no one was exactly lined up to ...

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...