Shields and Boris Blog on Elder Care, Health Care, and Caring in General

Want to avoid probate? You have options!

One important goal for many people seeking help with their estate plan is how to avoid probate.  If you’re also looking to keep your estate out of probate when you pass away, the good news is that you have several different ways of doing this. 

Why would you want to avoid probate?  There a few good reason.  Probate is a public process and many people prefer that their assets be distributed privately.  Probate can also be very time consuming and costly for your heirs, so it makes sense to avoid it whenever possible.

Consider these three ways of avoiding probate:

1. Living trust: you can set up a living trust to hold your assets.  You maintain control of the trust while you are alive, but when you pass away the trust goes to your beneficiary. 
2. Joint ownership: when you purchase property with your spouse or partner, you can chose to own it jointly or by tenancy by the entirety (which is only available to married couples in Pennsylvania).  In both types of ownership when one partner dies the other has the right of survivorship, so they take over complete ownership of the property.
3. Payable or transfer on death: you can add a payable on death (POD) designation to your bank accounts so your beneficiary receives them when you die, and you can set up your securities to transfer on death (TOD) to your beneficiary.

Please click on the links above to read more about these issues in our law library articles.