Search Results: heirs

Are you the beneficiary of a Florida estate?  Are you receiving documents from some Florida probate lawyer regarding a probate administration in Broward, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach County, Florida and trying to figure out who’s who? Consider this:  your rich uncle died in Boca Raton, Florida and his estate is being “probated” in the South County Courthouse in Delray Beach by his Florida estate lawyer.   Your uncle’s will names his attorney as the “personal representative.”  You receive a notice of administration in the mail and a letter from the Florida estate lawyer, saying that he or she is the “personal representative” and that his or her law firm is acting as his or her counsel. 

Can a beneficiary of a Florida estate or a  Florida trust obtain punitive damages when involved in a probate litigation or a trust litigation lawsuit?   Heirs, family members and beneficiaries who inherit under a Florida will or a trust who are involved in litigation want damages.  In fact, in Florida, damages are often an important last element to proving your case.  In courtrooms across south Florida, like Palm Beach Gardens, Ft. Lauderdale or Delray Beach, you must demonstrate how you have been injured or wronged:  what are you damages?  Sometimes the question arises: can you get punitive damages in a Florida estate or a Florida trust case?

Florida probate litigation is a growth industry, for good or bad.  Whether that means that beneficiaries, heirs and children of a Florida estate or Florida trust are getting the legal help they need, or whether there are too many inheritance fights or inheritance disuptes, is left to another discussion. Regardless, children and heirs, and beneficiaries under a Florida will, are engaging in disputes (fights) over family wealth and wills throughout South Florida: from Palm Beach Gardens in Palm Beach County, down the coast to Aventura and Miami-Dade County, Florida. 

In Florida, many probate lawyers know that a petition of administration filed to “open” an estate typically lists the surviving heirs of the deceased Florida resident.  Who is the surviving spouse and children?   Florida, like most states, has an intestacy statute which instructs all of us how a deceased Florida resident’s property shall pass when that person dies without a Florida will.  If you adopt a person in Florida, that adopted person typically then becomes an “heir” and is no longer an heir of that person’s original, or biological, parents. 

Do you need to “open” a Florida probate?  How does one begin the probate administration process in Florida?   How do you “open” a Florida probate?  How does one administer a Florida estate and deal with a Florida will? The good news is that opening a Florida probate in Palm Beach County, Broward County or Miami- Dade County, Florida is not terribly difficult but there are some traps for the unwary.  The person in possession of a deceased person’s will is referred to under Florida law, and to by Florida probate attorneys, as the “custodian.”  The custodian should file the will of the deceased Florida resident with the clerk of the court for the Florida county where the decedent resided.  

Florida residents, and heirs and family members who inherit from Florida estates and trusts, may participate in the estate administration process.  For Florida residents, that forum is the probate court, where an estate has been “opened up”.  An estate of a deceased Florida resident is opened up , or a probate administration is brought, by filing a petition in the county where the Florida resident resided. 

Can someone you’ve never met before inherit?  Can a child you never planned for and who is born after you die become a trust beneficiary?  In Florida, probate litigators are used to dealing with second and third spouses, children from a prior relationship, sibling rivalry, and disgruntled heirs.  Now, Florida probate attorneys and estate administrators are dealing with the collision of the law and science.

Is a handwritten will which is valid in another state valid in Florida?   A recent case has asked the Florida Supreme Court to weigh in on this.  Florida wills must be in writing and signed at the end of the will by the person making the will, in the presence of two witnesses who likewise sign the will.   The will must be typewritten, or, what others may now call, computer-generated. In other words, Florida courts do not recognize handwritten wills.