Probate

The Probate Process

See an overview of how the whole probate process works and what it does.

The probate process is one that is basically simple, but can become time-consuming and costly. This is especially true for families who did not expect to have to go through the probate process. Many people use a will for estate planning, and, while most people know what a will is, they overestimate its abilities. Even though a will is a legal document, it is not a legal transfer of our assets. Below is an example to show what happens when a will is the only document available for distributing assets. This will also show how the probate process works:

Bill and Joy are children of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson have passed away. They created a will and they left Bill and Joy as equal beneficiaries of this will. They have a house and a couple of bank accounts at their local banks with CDs and so on. Bill and Joy go into the bank to split up the estate as the will says. They bring in the will, the death certificate and they provide that to the teller and say, “We would like two checks made out to us to split this up.” And the bank will look at them and say, “I’m sorry. We don’t have the legal right to do that. We’re going to need information from a probate court.” So, from that point on, the children are required to go through this process where they have to go through a probate court proceeding.

Now, the reason why the probate process has to take place is because the court is going to determine if, number one, the will is valid. Then they will make sure that all the creditors are taken care of. They also set this process up to protect the financial institutions from any fraudulent actions. So, there has to be a series of checks and balances.

Now, even though the probate process is very valid and attempts to be fair, it can be very lengthy and it can be very costly for the family members. So, a lot of people are actually moving in the direction of setting up a living trust in order to avoid the probate process.