In today’s world the vast majority of inherited wealth gets transferred from one generation to the next via nonprobate “will substitutes” that are not subject to the costs and delays of a court-supervised probate proceeding, are not controlled by a person’s will, and are not governed by our probate code. Referred to as the nonprobate revolution, it’s a
I’m a long-time subscriber of Miami Judge Milton Hirsch’s thoughtfully written “Constitutional Calendar” email list. (Email him at milton.hirsch@gmail.com if you want to subscribe, which I highly recommend). Judge Hirsch recently wrote about The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a short story by Civil War vet Ambrose Bierce about a plantation owner in 1854
Our probate code uses the “interested person” concept to ensure that anyone who has a stake in a particular decision made during the course of an estate’s administration receives notice and an opportunity to be heard before a probate judge rules. F.S. 731.201(23) defines an “interested person” in generic terms as follows:
[A]ny person who
If you’re litigating a case and the defendant dies, the last thing you need is to get pulled into a side fight over who’s appointed personal representative (PR) of the defendant’s probate estate. On the other hand, no one wants to get their case dismissed for failing to comply with rule 1.260’s 90-day deadline for
I was recently in a contested court hearing where a smart and thoughtful attorney and an equally smart and thoughtful trial court judge were arguing over the nature of a “constructive trust.” Is it a remedy or a cause of action? I thought I knew the answer to this deceptively simple question. Turns out I
Choice-of-law problems involving marital property are relatively uncommon, but when they do come up it’s probably going to be in a probate proceeding. Even for Florida practitioners long accustomed to litigating cross-border matters (both domestic and international) these cases can be challenging. As explained by Prof. Finch in Choice-of-Law and Property, “[i]n the probate
In probate proceedings how assets are titled is a big deal. While I may walk around thinking that the assets of my single-member LLC are all mine, they’re really not. What I actually “own” or hold title to is my LLC membership interest, and it’s the LLC that in turn owns or holds title to
Advancements in assisted reproductive technology have created a class of heirs that would have been unimaginable to prior generations: children both conceived and born after one, or maybe even both, of their genetic parents has died. Falling under the general umbrella term of “posthumous conception,” they are the product of scientific breakthroughs dramatically extending the
If you make your living writing wills and trusts, or administering them, or litigating them, you live in a world dominated by words; be they contained in a client’s personal estate planning documents or the public statutes and court opinions governing their application.
And as practitioners we all rely on informal heuristics we’ve picked up
In Florida a couple’s marital property rights are based on the common law’s “separate property” regime. According to the IRS, the “theory underlying common law is that each spouse is a separate individual with separate legal and property rights.”
There’s a competing marital-property-rights regime known as “community property” that, as reported by the IRS
