Risks of Avoiding NY Probate

Are you wondering if their are risks of avoiding NY probate? New York attorney Robert Friedman explains what you need to know in this video.

Question:

What are the risks of avoiding New York probate?

Answer:

To avoid probate, I see people create living trusts. This is one of the common mistakes. They set up a living trust agreement, but they never fund the trust. The living trust doesn’t help you at all unless the assets are in the name of the trust. To fund a living trust with a house situation, you would sign a deed over to your trustees of your house to put it into the trust. For your investment accounts, you’d have to change the names on the accounts from your individual name to the name of the trust, the Henry Miller Living Trust, for example. Very often, people don’t take the next step. They create the living trust agreement, but they don’t fund it.

You don’t have to put all your assets in the trust. If it’s an irrevocable trust and you want to have access to some of your money, you may want to keep it separately and talk that over with your advisors. As I said, the convenience bank accounts result in litigation. Also, if you avoid probate, you need to coordinate with the distributions in your will. Joint ownership can result in some issues. If you’re sued with a life estate and have joint ownership of real estate with someone and that person is sued, there could be leans against that. There could be complications with joint ownership if one of the owners is going through a divorce.

Are you going through the estate planning process and have questions about the risks of avoiding NY probate? Contact our experienced New York probate Lawyers at Friedman & Ranzenhofer today to schedule your consultation.

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