We just posted an article with the caption, 'untangling Prince's estate.' The use of the verb 'untangle' in any of its tenses in the context of probate is just chilling to us. We do a lot of 'untangling' and one of the saddest things about it is that a great deal of it is unnecessary. We've posted ...
When we started a new series of blog posts back in April we weren't sure what direction things would go. It turns out that we hit on a few recurring themes and in looking back we realize these are themes for our times. It may seem like we wrote across a diverse spectrum of subjects - we did manage t...
Erik Broel and the Georgia Probate Law Group have just released a new edition of the Georgia Probate Handbook. How much do you know about the legal process of settling an estate in Georgia? How about the three phases every estate must go through? How to identify heirs? The ten ques...
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 ...
Law school professors are famous for telling students: "Never be in the casebook." The casebook is, of course, the text books used to teach students the law. It is chock full of cases that have been appealed and appealed again. No one not in a Dickens novel wants to be involved in cases like that. ...
This is the age of 'do-it-yourself' and, for good and bad, that also applies to the law. We are occasionally involved in probate matters, if not estate disputes, involving people who did some or all of their wills, trusts, etc. Instead of commenting directly, I think this story from a somewhat famo...
If you've been reading our blog over the last few months and you're the executor of an estate or trustee of a trust - or expect to be one in the near future -you may have second thoughts. Undue influence, self-dealing, gifts that aren't gifts. We've written about it all from the point of view of th...
