EstateExec™, the leading online software for estate executors and their lawyers, has added significant new AI capabilities to ...

At some point in your lifetime, you may be a beneficiary in waiting. That is what beneficiaries of wills do – they wait for a will to be probated, they wait for information from the estate’s personal ...

You see the pattern — through an agreement with the company holding the asset, you have provided for disposition of the asset ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Matthew F. Erskine is a trusts and estates attorney. Probate is a term that often sends shivers down the spine of those unfamiliar ...

Your 401(k) doesn’t just disappear when you die. Here’s how it’s transferred, who gets it, the tax impact, and why beneficiary updates matter more than you think.

Probate is usually required when there's no will, the will needs validating or there are no named beneficiaries. Many, or all, of the products featured on this page are from our advertising partners ...

If all registered assets pass to your intended beneficiaries without the need for an estate grant, then probate is not ...

Before you invest time and money into probate avoidance strategies, it's worth taking a step back to understand whether this ...

Putting everything you own into a living trust can feel like the safest way to help your kids skip probate, but some assets ...

When planning for the transfer of assets after death, two terms come up often: probate and trust. Probate is the court-supervised process of validating a will, paying debts and distributing assets to ...

Probate handles asset distribution post-death; having a will simplifies this process. Assign beneficiaries for assets like life insurance to bypass probate. Creating a trust can avoid probate, ...

Christy Bieber has a JD from UCLA School of Law and began her career as a college instructor and textbook author. She has been writing full time for over a decade with a focus on making financial and ...