Choosing A Personal Representative For Your Estate Without The Drama
Some estate planning decisions are more fun than others. Thinking about your possible need for nursing home care and how much it will cost is not fun, but other aspects of estate planning feel more like a party, and with good reason. If you have enough optimism to think of a funeral as a celebration of life, then perhaps you can think of the probate of your estate, where the court distributes your property to the beneficiaries of your will, as the after party to your life. Perhaps you are so generous and so easy to get along with that you didn’t disinherit any of your relatives. Therefore, you have written your will with no angst. Even if your will is a vehicle to formalize your estrangement from relatives with whom you plan never to reconcile, then signing your will can feel like a party. Choosing witnesses to sign your will in their capacity as witnesses can feel like choosing guests for a fifth-grade sleepover. Choosing a personal representative for your estate is a more serious matter, and you might agonize over the decision, even if your family members generally get along well with each other. For help gauging which family members, if any, are willing and able to serve as personal representative of your estate, contact a Tampa estate planning lawyer.
The Delicate Art of Notifying Your Family of Your Personal Representative Decision
The personal representative is the person who manages the probate of your estate. He or she opens the estate for probate, notifies heirs and creditors directly about the probate case and publishes notices in the newspaper, files the estate’s final tax return, responds to creditor claims, sells estate property if necessary, and distributes the money to the heirs at the end. As with the choice of beneficiaries, the choice of personal representative belongs only to you. No matter whom you choose, you should also list a successor personal representative in case the original one predeceases you.
The personal representative should be someone you trust not to introduce unnecessary conflict into your probate case and someone you trust to hire a lawyer if he or she needs to; personal representatives have the right to pay probate lawyers out of the estate funds. The personal representative can be a family member, a friend, or even a lawyer that you only know on a professional basis. You should notify the personal representative of your decision before or immediately after you sign your will, even though his or her duties will not begin until years later. If you think that the relatives you did not choose as personal representative will be offended by this decision, there is no need to tell them.
Contact David Toback About Choosing a Personal Representative
A Central Florida estate planning lawyer can help you draft a will, including clauses about a personal representative and successor personal representative. Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.
Source:
17th.flcourts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/PersonalRepresentativesHandbook_July2008.pdf
