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Estates...(any lawyers?)

post #1 of 42
12/12/09 at 5:03pm
Thread Starter 
Dead thread//
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post #2 of 42
12/12/09 at 5:35pm
No responsible, informed person can answer this for you here.

Get a lawyer who only does this kind of stuff. When someone starts telling you "when my uncle died my cousin said I should go to probate...." you need to run away.

Just get an estate lawyer.
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post #3 of 42
12/12/09 at 5:41pm
As an attorney, my advice is to hire an attorney. You aren't going to get any good legal advice for free from a stranger on the internet.
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post #4 of 42
12/12/09 at 5:44pm
... Part of the reason for which is that estates is a very nuanced area heavily influenced by common law, the binding precedent in your jurisdiction likely varies in subtle but important ways from that elsewhere. If there's one thing I learned about wills in law school, it's that the rules in the statute make little practical sense, and the judge-made law looks like the product of a few too many. You want a specialist. Thankfully it is (inexplicably) one of the lowest-paid areas, considering how much knowledge and work is required. I second / third the above... get a lawyer.
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post #5 of 42
12/12/09 at 5:48pm
Get an estate lawyer, not the guy who got your buddy Joe off on the minor in possession.

Specialists feast on generalists for this kind of stuff.
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post #6 of 42
12/12/09 at 7:25pm
Fully agree with all the above comments on retaining a lawyer. I practice in this area along with tax and I would never give off the cuff advice on it. Similar to the previous comments mentioning this area is highly dependant on common law and individual state trust law, there are also thousands of tricks to get the what you want in the right form at the right time. (That's why it so fun to practice this.) Therefore, because of the need to analyze your needs and the laws of your state, you're going to need a competent wills/trusts/estate lawyer. He or she will be able to work wonders on this and he/she will be able arrainge your estate to reduce taxes and protect any assets in trust if need be. While it is never fun to pay a lawyer, in the long run, it will be worth it. Like the old saying "pay them now or pay them later." Cheers.
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post #7 of 42
12/12/09 at 8:06pm
Thread Starter 
We do have a lawyer. He was the lawyer that wrote the will. The problem is he isn't communicating with us and the executor is real sketchy and doesn't answer his phone. I know that the lawyer could refuse to talk to us since neither the other person named in the will or me is the executor but I have no clue what he has done so far, if the funeral got paid for yet, if the final bills were paid, etc. He isn't even being real clear on how much it will cost us or how much the executor will get, which is concerning me. It's only been 3 weeks since we met him at the court to get the will legalized but I figured there would be more communication on what's going on.
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post #8 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:11am
Hire a probate lawyer and have him call everyone.
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post #9 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:17am
Remember that if you didn't pay him then he doesn't owe you the duties (eg. diligence --meaning that he has to return your phone calls) that a lawyer owes his clients per the rules of professional responsibility. You should really talk to a different lawyer than the one who wrote the decedent's will if you need legal advice concerning your rights as a beneficiary.

Your legal issues are not unique or particularly tricky. There may be some state-specific laws that your lawyer will need to be familiar with in order to properly address your concerns, however.

A bank account like you decribe with one or more pay-on-death beneficiaries is commonly called a Totten Trust. It passes on death to beneficiaries outside of probate. What happens to the money when a named beneficiary predeceases the settlor of the trust? The answer may very well be in the account agreements signed with the bank that held the trust. I'd look there first.

Based on what you say about the will (that you get 50% of the residual estate), you really want the trust to fail for lack of a living beneficiary and for the money to revert to the estate and be treated by probate as a part of the residual. My best guess is that there is someone out there who might stand to benefit if this did not happen. Might there be a child or sibling of the deceased beneficiary who is hoping to get a piece of the trust accounts? This is a common scenario.

I hope my musings help you put a finer point on your questions for a lawyer in your home state.
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post #10 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:19am
You may not realize it, but the lawyer who prepared the will / estate plan is not working for you. He or she represented the interests of the person who passed away, whose interests may or may not be the same as yours.

It is worth $250 or so to get your own independent advice. Take a copy of all the relevant documents and a list of questions. Then ask the lawyer if there are questions you should be asking.

Good luck.

* The preceding should not be construed as legal advice, even though I may or may not be an attorney.
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post #11 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:40am
I'm studying for wills/estates/trusts final right now, its pretty miserable...

Like people said above, hire an attorney if you want to learn these answers and more. Also, make sure you hire a good one.
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post #12 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:42am
I second the comment above about specialists and generalists.

Get an estate lawyer in your state.
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post #13 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:44am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TGPlastic View Post
Remember that if you didn't pay him then he doesn't owe you the duties (eg. diligence --meaning that he has to return your phone calls) that a lawyer owes his clients per the rules of professional responsibility. You should really talk to a different lawyer than the one who wrote the decedent's will if you need legal advice concerning your rights as a beneficiary.

Your legal issues are not unique or particularly tricky. There may be some state-specific laws that your lawyer will need to be familiar with in order to properly address your concerns, however.

A bank account like you decribe with one or more pay-on-death beneficiaries is commonly called a Totten Trust. It passes on death to beneficiaries outside of probate. What happens to the money when a named beneficiary predeceases the settlor of the trust? The answer may very well be in the account agreements signed with the bank that held the trust. I'd look there first.

Based on what you say about the will (that you get 50% of the residual estate), you really want the trust to fail for lack of a living beneficiary and for the money to revert to the estate and be treated by probate as a part of the residual. My best guess is that there is someone out there who might stand to benefit if this did not happen. Might there be a child or sibling of the deceased beneficiary who is hoping to get a piece of the trust accounts? This is a common scenario.

I hope my musings help you put a finer point on your questions for a lawyer in your home state.

What is the residual estate? Basically two people were supposed to split everything upon the death of the person who made the will. Well one of those two people named in the will passed away so the creator of the will decided that I would get half instead and made a new will stating that her entire estate would be split 50/50 between me and the other person who is still living, in the new will. She told me that everything was switched to my name. I never questioned it out of feeling greedy or something like that. Well upon her death I saw the will and I was named as an heir to 50 percent, but the beneficiary information was not changed on the annuities or bank accounts. My thoughts are that she had no idea she should have done this and nobody told her to change them. The person who is named as a beneficiary on most of the accounts who has passed away does not have any children, but has left behind a wife who does not expect to receive anything. So when the creator of the will died, the other beneficiary in the will and I contacted the lawyer who wrote the will because we didn't know what else to do. He told us to meet him at the court with the will and we did. We filed it and paid what we had to. He then instructed me to send him all the final bills and all the various account and annuity information. We haven't heard anything from him back and that was three weeks ago that we filed the will at the court house. The executor is a neighbor who we do not trust at all and we are concerned about what is going on. Also, the executor is friends with the lawyer. So I guess I will just call the lawyer and see what's up and contact another lawyer if things still don't seem right. Thanks for all the help guys. I know it's a tricky situation and you can't give actual legal advice.

I hope this explains it better. The lawyer is now acting on our behave because he has begun handling the estate and it concerns me that he could be earning 10's of thousands of dollars and he's not letting us know anything. It also seems a little weird that he would not instruct the person who made the will to change the beneficiary information. Seems like it would have made things a lot easier.
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post #14 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:48am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoVaguy View Post
I second the comment above about specialists and generalists.

Get an estate lawyer in your state.

I may not be saying what I need to because I am confused about all this but we do have an estate lawyer working for us. He is the one who wrote the will. We contacted him because we just assumed we should call the lawyer who wrote it. But the problem is we have not heard anything and I am concerned that the executor and lawyer are close friends, and we don't trust the executor at all. We are concerned that something unfair or not in the wishes of the will is going on.
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post #15 of 42
12/13/09 at 12:54am
Good catch by those above. The lawyer who drafted the will is not your lawyer. If you did not retain him, i.e. talk about the engagement, the fees, duties, manifest intent to retain and have it accepted by the attorney etc; he is not your lawyer. He is working for the estate of the deceased. This is a common mistake made in this situation where people think the lawyer of the estate-deceased is their lawyer. Also as mentioned above, there appear to be some specialized needs in your case such as the original trust failing and how to deal with the possible Totten trust. Estate lawyers are very common (of course vary in their quality). You should have no problem finding one. Good Luck. *and of course just casual talk, no legal advice is offered. Just saw your post. It also seems that you may have a conflict of interest situation between the executor and the original lawyer. Also, if you did retain the lawyer who wrote the will and he has worked for you all this time. He does have a duty to communicate with you. It still is a good course to consult an unrelated lawyer just to make sure the whole thing is kosher.
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