Many clients come to us wanting to make sure that there estate avoids Probate. Probate is the legal process that handles the administration of wills and decedents who die intestate (without a will). When talking to these clients about why they want to to avoid Oklahoma probate with an estate plan, three main reasons continually come up, and they are all good reasons.
- It is expensive. Oklahoma probate can cost 6% to 8% of the total value of the estate and even more. That means if you own a $200,000 house and no other assets, which is unlikely, probating your estate could cost your family $16,000. There are court fees, attorney fees, accounting fees, personal representative fees and potential litigation costs. Probate can get expensive quick! By comparison, a professionally developed family estate plan by the best attorney you can find will cost around one third of that.
- It takes forever! It is not uncommon for an Oklahoma Probate preceding to take 12 months. That means it could take your loved ones up to a year to get the assets you’ve worked so hard for and want to leave them. In some cases your family can’t afford to wait that long, they need the money to survive. If that applies to you, you need to talk to a qualified estate planning attorney. If you are here because you need an estate probated, we can probably do better than 12 months. We have expert knowledge of the Oklahoma Probate code and know how to probate an Oklahoma estate fast and efficiently.
- It is public. Oklahoma probate files are publicly accessible. That means that anyone who wants to know has access to your personal information. That includes assets, account balances, debt and family information. That makes our clients uncomfortable.
