What is a Probate Lawyer?
Since we can’t take it with us, as the saying goes, a probate lawyer’s job is to make sure your assets are distributed as you wish after you are gone. Proper execution means developing an effective estate plan, creating your will or living trust, and helping your executor pay the debts and distribute your assets to your beneficiaries.
When creating their will, an individual has the option to distribute assets to whomever they choose.
As we know, testators do not always elect to assign their assets in conventional ways. For example, one may choose to leave their wealth with an animal welfare society or other charity or to a close friend rather than to their children.
Sometimes the execution of a will does not go as smoothly as the deceased person and, most likely, the executor would have hoped. At times, a relative or someone close to the decedent may contest a will believing that their share of assets stipulated by the will must be wrong.
When a parent passes, the executor and the children of the deceased may face several challenges while liquidating the assets of the estate. While some aspects can be somewhat perplexing, an experienced estate attorney will help to smooth the way.
Power of attorney is a legal concept with which most of us are familiar, but may never fully understand until it is needed.
In its many forms, a power of attorney (POA) is a written document by which one person, the principal, authorizes another, a competent adult, to act as an agent to perform specified functions on the principal’s behalf. The extent of the agent or “attorney-in-fact” authority to act is defined by the type of POA agreement.
