Mario Godoy: Well, welcome to this video. This is the three common mistakes in a state planning. This is Mario Godoy and Steven Novak with the estate and probate legal group. Uh, Steve, you just want to say a quick hello. And so today we’re going to be talking about what we see in probate courts. Uh, so for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process, um, you know, we represent folks in both estate planning. Uh, we also represent folks, uh, that need guardianships and we represent folks that are in probate court. And so probate is where we are all destined to go to. If we don’t do a good job of transferring title of all our property, uh, at our death or before deaths. So these are all things that we can help you with, but even when you do make a plan, uh, there are some common mistakes that we see.
Steve Novak: Yeah. So this is, um, you know, failure to complete funding and update insurance plans and, and similar to mistake one, this is, this is a situation where, you know, if you’ve gone through the trouble of creating a state plan, we want to make sure you actually retain the benefits of it. Um, funding and things like that, you know, is, is more common when you’re dealing with trusts. Um, and vehicles of that nature. You know, we have clients you can create trusts and, you know, and anybody who creates a trust is, you know, one of the things that, you know, if you’re not doing it with the assistance of a good estate planning attorney is you don’t realize that it’s, that you need to fund it. There’s an extra step that you need to take to fund your living trust. Um, because otherwise, essentially, you know, when you pass away and your trust is in funded, then you know, you may need to go to probate to do allow the probate court to do the funding for you.
Mario Godoy: And so mistake number three.
Steve Novak: So this one, I mean, this one is probably, you know, probate court, you see this, this a lot. Um, you know, basically someone will have when they’re creating a will, there is one person that they have in mind to be their executor, um, and that person, for whatever reason now can’t do it. And so we’re basically in a situation where you got and gone through the trouble of creating a will and naming an executor, but, but now that executor can act. So what happens? Um, so now basically it, it opens it up to all your diff all your heirs to either serve or nominate someone to serve as administrator. Um, the technical term is administrator with will annexed because, you know, they’ll still go ahead and follow your will, but now you have an issue as to who’s going to be the administrator. Um, and, and, you know, the issue with that, and there’s actually two big ones is one, is that now there there’s, it opens up the potential for a fight over.
