Expert legal help is a good idea during estate planning, while navigating probate as a personal representative, or when serving as a trustee. Here are examples of the legal processes attorneys can guide you through, depending on your circumstances.
Different Legal Processes
Although many attorneys can help with a variety of needs ranging from estate planning, to probate procedures and trust administration, it’s important to understand that these areas do in fact involve different legal processes:
Estate planning attorneys focus on creating a plan to manage a person’s money, property, and affairs upon their death or if they are unable to manage it themselves. Probate and trust administration attorneys, on the other hand, deal with settling an estate or trust after the person has passed away. While there can be some overlap between these roles, not every attorney handles both. As part of the estate planning process, you should discuss with your attorney the role they will play during your lifetime and whether they can also assist your loved ones with estate and trust administration when you pass away.
Specifically, for example, during the estate planning process, an attorney can help prepare a will, advise on how a trust might be worthwhile, and also assist with tasks such as:
- Selecting an executor and trustee
- Minimizing estate taxes
- Transferring accounts and property to a trust or naming a trust as a beneficiary
- Helping you choose the right beneficiaries and structure their inheritances to meet their needs
- Choosing agents under financial and medical powers of attorney
- Creating medical directives
No matter how diligent you are in organizing your affairs during your lifetime, it is likely that your designated fiduciaries, such as a personal representative or trustee, will still have quite a lot to do upon your death. Probate and trust attorneys can really come in handy with the navigation of “the legal processes that your death sets in motion”:
Some common duties that a probate attorney performs for clients include the following:
- Giving legal advice regarding the client’s responsibilities and rights
- Identifying and creating an inventory of what you owned at the time of your death
- Making sure the personal representative pays any estate and income taxes owed and any of your outstanding debts that must be paid
- Preparing and filling necessary court documents
- Assisting to retitle accounts and property as necessary
- Transferring accounts and property to appropriate beneficiaries
A trust attorney may:
- Review…the trust document and [state] law to guide the trustee through the steps that must be taken to ensure they are performing all required legal duties, such as keeping records, filing taxes, making distributions, and fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to act in the best interests of the trust’s beneficiaries
- Prepare…legal documents necessary for the transfer of ownership of the trust’s accounts and property
Good To Know: Fiduciary Duties and Bonds
Individuals serving as personal representatives, executors or trustees are all fiduciaries, meaning they are “legally responsible to act in the best interests of the estate and…will be held accountable by the…court.” In most states, it’s typical for fiduciaries to “have bonds to ensure their trustworthy behavior in their roles. These bonds guarantee that all the estate debts will be satisfied and that the remaining assets will be properly distributed to the appropriate heirs.” More information about personal representative and other fiduciary bonds is available right here. Fiduciaries in every state can can quickly and easily obtain bonds, online, at Colonial Surety:
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