According to research, people spend millions of dollars on court and probate lawyer fees when dealing with the probate process after a family member’s death. This means that people have to deal with the grief of a loved one’s death and the stress of arranging money alongside. Moreover, even if the will exists, the court allows other creditors to step forward and contest the will, which can be another long, costly, and tiring process.
Here are some steps to avoid unnecessary probate costs and simplify the probate process.
Transferring Inheritance to a Trust
If you want your inheritors to receive property without paying extra costs, you can consider the option of entrusting your property to an inter-vivos trust or a revocable living trust. But how does this work? The properties included in inheritance have to go through the probate process, but the properties in a trust don’t get probated legally.
For this, you can simply create a trust document and transfer the property to a trust. After your death, the trust transfers your property to your inheritor without the wait. You can also add more names as beneficiaries in a trust document, and creditors can’t challenge this in court.
Making Gifts
If you don’t want to bring another person as a trustee in between, you can always resort to a more straightforward option — making tax-free gifts. In the year 2020-2021, you could gift your inheritors $15,000 worth of gifts every year without having to pay taxes on them.
Therefore, we recommend distributing a significant part of your property as gifts. The fewer your assets are, the lower will be the probate costs.
Set Transfer-On-Death Accounts
Another option you can explore for low-probate costs inheritance is setting up a transfer-on-death account, also called a payable-on-death registration. A transfer-on-death account is easy to create, and your inheritors can easily claim and get the money afterward.
However, one limitation of this process is that many banks and firms don’t allow you to set this option, as it requires additional paperwork and process. But you can be persistent and ask your bank for the forms.
However, if you have received a will from a family member who has taken none of the above-mentioned steps, you need to contact a Real Property Law firm Brooklyn immediately. At Ledwidge and Associates, we have a 15-year experienced probate attorney Queens who can provide you with cost-saving probate solutions.
Get in touch with us and hire a Probate lawyer Brooklyn today for cost-effective probate representation.
Ledwidge & Associates
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