Approved Inheritance Cash

Probate Advance

Last Will and Testament

Probate is a legal document. Receipt of probate is the first step in the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person, resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person’s property under a will. A probate court (surrogate court) decides the legal validity of a testator’s will and grants its approval by granting probate to the executor. The probated will become a legal instrument that may be enforced by the executor in the law-courts if necessary. A probate also officially appoints the executor (orpersonal representative), generally named in the will, as having legal power to dispose of the testator’s assets in the manner specified in the testator’s will. However, through the probate process a will may be contested.

To receive cash now from an inheritance, a beneficiary or an heir of a will or trust assigns a portion of his or her future inheritance to AIC in exchange for a payment, usually within five business days of application. The beneficiary or heir signs a short contract to assign his or her future inheritance, and AIC is paid by the estate, not the beneficiary or heir. Since this assignment is not a loan, no interest payments are ever due.

PROBATE ADMINISTRATION

Probate is a process that proves the will of a deceased person is valid, so their property can in due course be retitled (US terminology) or transferred to beneficiaries of the will. As with any legal proceeding, there are technical aspects to probate administration:

  • Creditors must be notified and legal notices published.
  • Executors of the will must be guided in how and when to distribute assets and how to take creditors’ rights into account.
  • A Petition to appoint a personal representative may need to be filed and letters of administration obtained. A Grant of Letters of Administration can be used as proof that the ‘Administrator’ is entitled to handle the assets[12].
  • Homestead property, which follows its own set of unique rules in states like Florida, must be dealt with separately from other assets.[13] In many common law jurisdictions such as Canada, parts of the US, the UK, Australia and India, jointly owned property passes automatically to the surviving joint owner separately from any will, unless the equitable title is held as tenants in common.
  • There are time factors involved in filing and objecting to claims against the estate.
  • There may be a lawsuit pending over the decedent’s death or there may have been pending suits that are now continuing. There may be separate procedures required in contentious probate cases.
  • Real estate or other property may need to be sold to effect correct distribution of assets pursuant to the will or merely to pay debts.
  • Estate taxes, gift taxes or inheritance taxes must be considered if the estate exceeds certain thresholds.
  • Costs of the administration including ordinary taxation such as income tax on interest and property taxation is deducted from assets in the estate before distribution by the executors of the will.
  • Other assets may simply need to be transferred from the deceased to his or her beneficiaries, such as life insurance. Other assets may have pay on death or transfer on death designations, which avoids probate.

United States

In any jurisdictions in the U.S. that recognize a married couple’s property as tenancy by the entireties, if a person dies intestate (owning property without a will), the portion of his/her estate so titled passes to a surviving spouse without a probate.

If the estate is not automatically devised to the surviving spouse in this manner or through a joint tenancy, and is not held within a trust, it is necessary to “probate the estate”, whether or not the decedent had a valid will. A court having jurisdiction of the decedent’s estate (a probate court) supervises probate, to administer the disposition of the decedent’s property according to the law of the jurisdiction and the decedent’s intent as manifested in his testamentary instrument. Distribution of certain estate assets requires selling illiquid assets, including real estate. There are exceptions for smaller estates. For example, California has a “Small Estate Summary Procedure” to allow the summary transfer of a decedent’s asset without a formal Probate proceeding. The dollar limit by which the Small Estate procedure can be effectuated is $100,000.[16] If the decedent died without a will, known as intestacy, the estate is distributed according to the laws of the state where the decedent resided, or as held by the court. If the decedent died with a will, the will usually names an executor (personal representative), who carries out the instructions laid out in the will. The executor marshals the decedent’s assets. If there is no will, or if the will does not name an executor, the probate court can appoint one. Traditionally, the representative of an intestate estate is called an administrator. If the decedent died with a will, but only a copy of the will can be located, many states allow the copy to be probated, subject to the rebuttable presumption that the testator destroyed the will before death.

In some cases, where the person named as executor cannot administer the probate, or wishes to have someone else do so, another person is named administrator. An executor or an administrator may receive compensation for his service.

The probate court may require that the executor provide a fidelity bond, an insurance policy in favor of the estate to protect against possible abuse by the executor.[17]

The representative of a testate estate who is someone other than the executor named in the will is an administrator with the will annexed, or administrator c.t.a. (from the Latin cum testamento annexo.) The generic term for executors or administrators is personal representative.

Steps of Probate

Some of the decedent’s property may never enter probate because it passes to another person contractually, such as the death proceeds of an insurance policy insuring the decedent or bank or retirement account that names a beneficiary or is owned as “payable on death”, and property (sometimes a bank or brokerage account) legally held as “jointly owned with right of survivorship”.

Property held in a revocable or irrevocable trust created during the grantor’s lifetime also avoids probate. In these cases in the U.S. no court action is involved and the property is distributed privately, subject to estate taxes.

After opening the probate case with the court, the personal representative inventories and collects the decedent’s property. Next, he pays any debts and taxes, including estate tax in the United States, if the estate is taxable at the federal or state level. Finally, he distributes the remaining property to the beneficiaries, either as instructed in the will, or under the intestacy laws of the state.

A party may challenge any aspect of the probate administration, such as a direct challenge to the validity of the will, known as a will contest, a challenge to the status of the person serving as personal representative, a challenge as to the identity of the heirs, and a challenge to whether the personal representative is properly administering the estate. Issues of paternity can be disputed among the potential heirs in intestate estates, especially with the advent of inexpensive DNA profiling techniques. In some situations, however, even biological heirs can be denied their inheritance rights, while non-biological heirs can be granted inheritance rights.[18]

The personal representative must understand and abide by the fiduciary duties, such as a duty to keep money in interest bearing account and to treat all beneficiaries equally. Not complying with the fiduciary duties may allow interested persons to petition for the removal of the personal representative and hold the personal representative liable for any harm to the estate.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probate
The chart below illustrates a general timeline you can expect during your probate process.

Probate Timeline