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What Are Some Other Ways To Avoid Probate?

There are other ways to avoid probate also, although it would not be advisable to do those because the whole thing would come down to whether the person owned anything when they died because that would generally have to be disposed off through the probate court.

The only way to avoid probate court would be for the person to get rid of everything they owned, which is actually what they would be doing with the trust when they took everything and just put it into the trust.

Some people who do not want to set up a trust just get rid of everything they have or they just give it all away. Parents might give everything to their children and just trust that the children would take care of it and they would trust that the children would not spend all the money. They would have to trust that the children would do the right thing.

Basically, the same concept would apply, and the court would see if the parents had anything in their name when they died and in case they did not have anything, they would not have any protection and they would not have any control because they had given up everything.

With giving it to a trust, the person would give it up out of their own name but they would still maintain the control over it. For example, let us suppose someone gave all of their possessions to a friend or they gave them something like a million dollars.

In case that friend got sued or filed bankruptcy, then since those million dollars would be in their account and in their name, the creditors could just come along and claim that million dollars. It would not matter to the creditor if the person explained that it was not actually their million dollars and that the money actually belonged to a good friend so it should not count.

This would be in the situation where the friend who had been given the money did the right thing and actually kept the money in the bank. On the other hand, the friend could just go and spend it.

The person who gave the money might come back later and ask for that money because they were thinking of buying a house or whatever, but then their friend would just not have the money because they had spent it all, so then the person would sue his friend because he had trusted them to keep the money safe.

There is basically no rule that if someone gave something to someone, they could not just take it. Technically it would be theirs and it would be in their name, which is why it would be a really bad idea to do it this way.

These are some of the other ways to avoid probate, but they are not advisable because there would really not be any good reason to do it.

How Does A Revocable Living Trust Avoid Probate And Are There Alternatives To Living Trusts?

A revocable or irrevocable trust could avoid probate and that probate would be for the person. When someone dies, whatever they owned would have to be probated because the person themselves would not be there anymore to give it away or to sign the deed to their house or to do anything else because they are dead.

Somebody else would need to have the authority to deal with everything instead of the deceased. This person would not be randomly decided, so it would need to be done properly and legally to avoid any situation where someone might get taken advantage of, there was fraud or any other such issue.

The probate process exists where the court would look at everything the deceased owned and they would look at what the deceased wanted to be done with it. They would look at the person who the deceased had chosen to handle everything, and then the court would oversee it so they could make sure it was being done the right way, and all this would be because the deceased owned everything in their own name.

With a trust, the deceased would not actually own anything anymore because the trust would own everything.

The deceased person’s house could also go into the trust. Let us suppose the trust is named the Brain Douglas Family Trust. The trust would be the owner of that house if it had been put under the trust, meaning that instead of being under the name of, let us suppose Brian Douglas, it would be under the name of Brian Douglas Family Trust. The bank account would be in the name of the Brian Douglas Family Trust, not Brian Douglas.

The trustee would be in charge of those assets and they would have the authority to buy, sell and do whatever the trust document instructed them to do.

One way to avoid probate would be if the trustee of the Brian Douglas Family Trust died. The court would see if the trustee owned anything, and if everything was in the name of the trust, then there would be nothing to take to probate because all the assets were in the trust.

Instead of having to go to probate in court and get somebody to allow certain things to be done to the deceased person’s assets, they would just need to look at the trust document which would name the successor trustee in the event the original trustee was incapacitated or dead.

The successor trustee would then step in and pick up right where the original trustee had left off. The trust document would state what the successor trustee could do in the event the original trustee was incapacitated, and it would state what the successor trustee could do if the original trustee died so they could instruct where the deceased person’s possessions would go.

Things would just proceed from there, because if the deceased person had a bank account in their own name and died, there then would be no one to go and take the money out because the bank would obviously not let anyone else take the money out of someone’s account.

A trust would be something like a business account, where it would be a matter of changing the CEOs or other people who had access to the account, whereas the money would still be there. The person would just have to show the bank that there was an authority for them to control those assets.

For example, if the person was the new president to the company, then the bank would allow them to sign papers. It would be the same thing with the trust. The fact is that the trust did not die, the trustee or the person in the trust died, so then the trust would instruct a chosen individual to be the next trustee if the original trustee died, and there would be no reason to stop anything.

For more information on Avoiding Probate Through Living Trusts, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you’re seeking by calling (770) 933-9009 today.