Take 5 Minutes To Give Your Loved Ones A Gift (Not A Curse) From Beyond The Grave
Kevin Mepham
Creator of the Thrivespan System. Thrive Now. For Life. || Business Information Systems Consultant
My Mom passed away in 2022. I was her executor. She had a valid uncontested will, two fully cooperative heirs with equal shares, and an estate consisting of…a checking account.
Yet it took a two-year probate process, many hours of my time, and thousands in state-mandated attorney fees before my sister and I got the contents of that simple checking account.
If that sounds shocking, you haven’t been through probate…yet. This article is for you.
You’ll learn what someone should have taught Mom: the one simple trick to get your money to your heirs immediately. No attorney fees, no muss, no fuss. If you care about your heirs, you’ll do this.
And if your mom (or dad) is still with you, you can teach them this trick too, and save yourself a lot of trouble down the line.
You’ll just have to put up with me saying “probate” a lot. (Oh, and face up to your mortality.)
Probate: What Is It And Why Should You Care?
Probate is a legal procedure where a court oversees the distribution of a deceased person’s property (a.k.a. “estate”). It is designed to move slowly, and is further slowed by long waits for court dates . Your estate can be bottled up, untouchable by your heirs, for years.
Probate is also time-consuming for your executor — even if they hire an attorney to do most of the work. (Reading all 432 pages of “How to Probate an Estate in California” only taught me to not try this at home.)
Don’t put your heirs and executor through this. They’ll have a difficult enough time dealing with losing you.
You must make a will. But realize that your will won’t keep your estate out of probate! It simply specifies how you want your assets to be distributed. That distribution will still go through the entire probate process with all its disadvantages…
…unless you make arrangements to have some or all of your assets passed directly to your heirs, avoiding probate altogether.
This Simple Trick Gets Your Money To Your Heirs Quickly
Depending on the type of asset, arrangements to avoid probate take different forms. If you have substantial property assets, your options include joint ownership, transfer-on-death, and living trusts, all of which are complicated to set up. Talk to an attorney about those.
Mom, however, had no property, only that checking account. She could have saved my sister and me from probating that account with one simple 5-minute step: specifying us as joint beneficiaries on her checking account.
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Naming beneficiaries would have excluded her checking account from her estate. The bank would have simply paid the funds to us upon her death, avoiding attorney fees and skipping the 2-year-long probate process altogether.
Name beneficiaries for your accounts. That’s it. That’s the trick.
Even if your heirs have to wait for property assets to go through probate, they’ll still get your money right away — and without attorneys taking a cut.
A Cheap, Valuable Gift From The Grave
I don’t want my executor and heirs to go through what I went through. So last month I took a few minutes to name beneficiaries for nearly all my bank and investment accounts. (”Nearly all” means I kept one account in the estate with funds for my executor to pay any outstanding bills.)
It was easy.
Here’s all you have to do:
It will take you about 5 minutes per account. Those 5 minutes will save your executor and heirs years and thousands of dollars.
That’s a pretty sweet gift you can give them from the grave.
What’s keeping you from giving it?
(Note that I am not an attorney or financial advisor. I’m simply sharing my experience. Do your own research and consult professionals as you deem necessary.)
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