One question I get all the time in dealing with Florida Probate Litigation   in Palm Beach County is, what happens when my mother whose deceased is left something in a will? Similarly you may be wondering, what if I put my mother in a will and she dies before me? This is the same legal dilemma, the Probate law deals with these through lapse and anti lapse statutes that you may have read about elsewhere. A 2010 case out of the Third District Court of Appeals in Miami Dade County is a good example of how the Florida anti-lapse statutes work. Also check out four things you should know about the anti lapse law in Florida. 

Probate and inheritance disputes can break up family ties. Often poor   estate planning is rationalized by thetestator because “their family is to in sync to fight over money.” This misconception is not only false, I can actually debunk it with examples. Another common rationalization is that your estate is not that valuable to your wealthy relatives. This too simply is not the case, almost ever. Here is my breakdown of the most common players in a probate dispute. As a case study I have broken down who the players in the Michael Jackson Estate were and what they did to prolong probate.

Were you recently named as a beneficiary in your uncle from Boca Raton’s will  but you think you were entitled to a bigger share? Worse were you disinherited from the inheritance of a wealthy relative? The vehicle for change in a Florida Probate Court when this happens is a will contest.  I am asked everyday about different situations all with the same hook can I challenge a will under these terms in Florida? The short answer is always it depends, but here is a crash course onwhat grounds you can contest a will for in Florida.

Maybe the last few years of your marriage were not ideal and your   spouse disinherits you, in other words they eliminate you from their will. Do you have any rights in this situation? In Florida a spouse has a right to an inheritance known as an elective share if they wish to forfeit their inheritance under the will. In Florida you can waive your right to an elective share. A case handed down this week from Broward County shows that the question of whetherelective share was waived depends on which will is considered the valid last will and testament.

If you are an individual who is trustee of a family trust, do you know what it really takes to be a trustee?  Are you certain you know what to do — and not do?  Now there is a brand new book about an individual being the trustee of a family trust. Pankauski’s Trustee’s Guide is now available in digital format on Kindle and at Amazon.com.

Are you involved in a family trust and there is a problem with the individual  trustee?  What do you do if your family trustee is behaving badly?  How can a trust beneficiary know what to do if your trustee is not cooperating? Have you read the new book on an individual serving as trustee of a family trust?  Pankauski’s Trustee’s Guide is a a brand new, never-before, book on what an individual trustee of a trust should do, with lots of examples of trustees doing the wrong things.

If you are a beneficiary of a trust in Florida you have a right to expect that the trustee will uphold his fiduciary   duty owed to you.  Sometimes a beneficiary can get somewhat trigger happy with litigation because they may see the potential gain from a victory regarding the trust. What often these beneficiaries forget is they are essentially fighting themselves. The attorney fees your trustee expels fighting you can be taken directly out of the trust in certain circumstances. A January 2015 case in Florida highlights how you might avoid these fees as a beneficiary litigating against a trustee.

Ambiguity is something Palm Beach Probate Attorneys are used to but  also something we try desperately to avoid. What is an ambiguity? Its something that is unclear either on its face or its unclear how it should be applied. When we draft an estate plan the goal is avoid ambiguity. A case coming out the fourth DCA a few years ago illustrates how ambiguities vary. Ambiguities can occur in an infinite amount of ways, such that an exhaustive list is impossible. I hope this case highlights one of the many things to consider in checking for ambiguities in your estate plan.   

I write a lot about how you can contest a will in Florida but did you know you   can also contest a life insurance beneficiary? In Florida under six particular circumstances you may be able to challenge thebeneficiary of a life insurance policy that gets paid after the decedent’s death. Do you think that your grandmother only left your cousin as the beneficiary because he threatened to stop paying for her nursing home? There is something you can do. Challenge the person’s right to be a beneficiary of the life insurance. Here are six ways how. 

Beneficiary designations and pay on death (sometimes abbreviated “POD”) designations are often used as convenient mechanisms to avoid probate or trust administration.  Most banks and financial institutions allow their customers to name beneficiaries on their accounts and thereby avoid probate.  A new case from Florida shows how a mandatory death bed beneficiary provision in a membership agreement for a limited liability company results in the membership interest immediately passing into the hands of the heirs, as opposed to going through probate.