On Friday, April 30th at 8 a.m. EST, Mr. Steven Berger and guest, Karla Horn, discuss our best probate tips.

Karla Horn who helps with all things probate and administration in our office.

Differences between small and regular estates are the amount of paperwork needed and also the timelines.

The Register of Wills office is very helpful. Their office were allowing electronic signatures during Covid, but that is no longer available. That may change in the future. Other counties may have different rules.

Savings bond are popular with older generations and are difficult to cash-in. Paperwork is needed, but not a lot of banks don’t deal with them anymore. Savings bonds are now digital.

Computershare accounts. Insurance accounts changed over to shares and a lot of times there aren’t beneficiaries so they are sent to the estate instead of the individual. Paperwork can be difficult. Over $10K requires a medallion guarantee which is different than a notary. These can be picky even down to the ink being used.

For government employees, their ESP plans really need a beneficiary otherwise it goes to the estate and ends up with the entire gain at one time, but beneficiaries could take distributions each year. This can result in higher tax rates.

When claims gets admitted to the Register of Wills Office. You have to determine if the estate has enough money to pay it and if not, what the hierarchy is of the claims.

We are here as a sounding board and want to make sure we are taking care of the stressful items while the client is grieving. We are happy to walk you through everything.

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Bring your questions about estate planning and administration to our weekly Facebook Live with Mr. Berger on Fridays at 11am EST. Leave your email if you’d like to receive a notification of our response.