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“Lorne Book and team handled our family's will entirely and we couldn't be more pleased with the process.”
FAQs
What is the difference between a will and a trust?
Both will and trust can be used to transfer your property to your loved ones after you die. But they go about this differently. Once you create a trust, you place assets in it during your lifetime, though you generally continue to use and control that property until you die. With a will, you maintain direct ownership of your property during your lifetime.
Can we avoid probate in Texas, and if so, how?
Probating an estate can be a time-consuming and costly process. Many estate planning tools transfer wealth without being subject to probate. Probably the most important of these is a trust. Assets placed in trust generally avoid having to pass through probate before being passed on to beneficiaries according to your instructions. Life insurance policies and jointly owned real estate with the right of survivorship also avoid probate.
What are the legal requirements for a valid will in Texas?
Unless your will meets the standards set out by state law, the probate judge could throw it out, which could cause major delays in administrating your estate and lead to very different inheritances than you intended. Fortunately, meeting these requirements is fairly simple:
How do I handle my digital assets in my estate plan?
Digital assets like your social media accounts, photographs and other media stored in the cloud can be very important. Unless you provide access in your estate plan, it could take your executor a lot of time and hassle to dispose of them as you wish. You can avoid this and make things much easier for your executor by drawing up a list of usernames and passwords for your online accounts and backing up your cloud-stored data on a laptop or external storage device.
What happens to my estate if I die without a will or estate plan in place?
Dying without a valid will is called dying intestate. When this happens in Texas, state intestacy laws determine who will inherit the estate. This can mean that people you love will not inherit as you wanted and others who you did not want to inherit will get part or all of your estate. This is why putting off estate planning until it is too late is such a risky mistake. A few hours of working with an estate planning attorney puts control over your estate in your hands and removes intestacy laws from the picture.
More detailed information is available on the FAQ page of our website.
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