What is probate? Why does it matter in estate and legacy planning? Could you use a quick guide to probate in an easy-to-follow video primer?

This short video explains the basic steps in a Texas probate. At its most fundamental level, probate is the process of determining who will carry out your wishes, what you own, tallying up your debts (if any), paying off those debts, and distributing your remaining assets to your heirs.

How can this become complicated? Consider this question: who are your heirs? Dying without any kind of an estate plan can become messy. The law sets out a distribution scheme to your heirs, which requires determining who those people are and what they will receive. Please see this PDF, which is an example from the Travis County Probate Court. This is called an “intestate” distribution. How do we ensure that everyone gets a fair share? We may have to do an heirship proceeding – a significant extra step – in order to clear everything up.

Here’s another question for you: how should your assets be distributed? For example, who should receive which specific items such as family heirlooms? Should one person receive the house? Should it be sold and the proceeds divided up between heirs? Will your heirs end up being unsatisfied with the intestate distribution?

There are a number of planning tools that can prevent this from happening, such as trusts, ensuring that beneficiaries are designated on various accounts, transfer on death deeds, Lady Bird deeds, and even a simple will. Each of this is a different “tool” in an attorney’s toolbox! Because these are too dense to cover in a single quick guide, we’ll go into more depth in future videos. We hope you’ve enjoyed this; if you have any feedback or suggestions for us, please let us know! We’ll be attempting to post these videos around once per week.

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