Last week a lady come to the office to talk to me about typing a couple of new deeds for her. In sitting and chatting with her, the subject of estate planning came up. Specifically, she wanted to know what she could do now, so that her family would be able to avoid probate when she passed. Her friend told her that she had a revocable living trust and this lady wondered if our company typed trusts. She started telling me the story of her own parents. It seems that they owned several pieces of real property. Her father “didn’t believe in trusts”, so her parents had not done anything about estate planning or drafting a trust.
When my customer’s father passed, she and her siblings, after much talking, finally convinced their mother to see someone about estate planning and more specifically, trusts. An appointment was set to start the process. However, before the appointment day came, my customer’s mother was in an accident and died. So, in spite of the fact that my customer and her siblings were able to convince their mother that she needed a trust, she died, and their mother’s estate had to go through Probate.
According to my customer, Probate was a nightmare! Because there was so much bickering between the siblings, there were numerous court dates, meetings with attorneys, and the process took nearly 14 years! As she concluded her story, I could see sadness in her eyes. It seems that along with the process taking 14 years, which only prolonged the healing process after one loses a loved one, she came away having lost all of her siblings because there were such hard feelings toward each other about the entire process. And the majority of the properties once owned by her parents had to be sold to keep paying all of the fees involved in going through the probate process.
If only her parents had talked to someone who could have explained estate planning to them, maybe their father would have “believed in trusts” and they could have prevented their children from going through such a terrible, hurtful time. Of course the parents probably had no idea that their children would bicker to the point of never speaking to one another again. But death changes people. Everyone should have something in place in the event that something happens to them. It’s something to think about….
We are not attorneys. We cannot give you advice. If you need advice, you will need to consult with an attorney