re: #391 lawhawk

Once again, my condolences on your loss and am sorry to hear about all the troubles that followed with settling their estates. A little bit of planning can save a whole bunch of trouble down the line. Small estates don’t necessarily require a lawyer to draft a will, but even someone with only a few bank accounts/iras/401k/pensions, or insurance proceeds should update their beneficiary lists periodically to make it easy to avoid probate.

It’s always a good idea to periodically review your financials.

My parents went the irrevocable joint trust route and a lot of the details went very smoothly when nature took its course. Most of the issues and pain came from the final settling of my mother’s estate where two major things went wrong:
1. The lawyer my brother hired to do probate work essentially did nothing for two years.
2. We found some accounts, including an IRA, that had to be split up (and taxed) at a later time. They were not included in the documentation my mother left and were discovered after my brother took over and handled things using power of attorney.