There's a matter headed for a probate court in Tennessee that will probably end up encapsulating many of the issues we've been writing about all year. It's very early in the process and not even all the legal issues seem to have been identified yet, but it promises to tick off a lot of the boxes we ...
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...
Being an Executor can be tough. Even when things look simple, odds are they are not. Here's a quick run down on some of the most common mistakes executors make. Please note, these may seem to go against common sense ... because they often do. [caption id="attachment_1509" align="alignleft" width="3...
This is from a friend who was an attorney who once did a fair amount of estate planning in the late ‘90s in the Greater New York City area. Stick around for the punchline: “I had a client who owned brownstones in Manhattan and apartment complexes in Brooklyn and Queens. Neat guy – French aris...
If you've been reading our blog for any length of time, you know that precious little of what happens in Probate Court is private. Look at it this way, it it was we wouldn't have enough material for one blog, never mind dozens. [caption id="attachment_1507" align="alignleft" width="300"] (Photo cre...
You probably know what your house is worth at any given time. Your 401k, pension plan, bank accounts, are all easy to value, you can find them on-line in a matter of minutes. But what about personal items, especially items that we think might be valuable but are entirely dependent on the marketplace...
It occurs to us that we write an awful lot about problems in probate, trusts, administration, executorships and much more. That's probably because it's a lot easier to learn from mistakes than the flawless execution of a document. As an old law professor of mine once said, casebooks are hardly fille...
Litchfield is a beautiful town in the Central Hills of Connecticut. It's sits on top of one of those hills, a New England town green is the center of town, brick and stone buildings line part of the six roads that cross in its center, white colonials and bright Victorian homes line the others. The ...
Over the last few months we've written a lot about conditions that slow the probate process down. Considerably. We've picked on the Prince estate, but only because it's continuously in the news and serves as a perfect example for a lot of what can go wrong. But, things don't always have to go wrong ...
A lot of estates are comprised of businesses that still have to operate while the probate court does its work. And more than a few of those estates are the estates of the owner and sole decision maker of that business. That complicates matters. As it has been since the unfortunate death of Prince ea...
