Just a follow-up/clarification on this post from a month ago. It may be implied in the post, but in an intestate case (that is, where the decedent left no Will), all that's needed is a petition to amend heirship and a new affidavit of heirship.
I would also add that a lot of the difficulty and expense (in terms of time and money) in amending can be addressed at the beginning of the process. The attorney should explain to the client what an heir is, and the client should be able to get the attorney a list of all of the decedent's heirs, with full names and addresses (and, if possible, telephone numbers).
Tim O'Sullivan has had more than 30 years to perfect his ability to gauge how much his estate planning services will cost.
Premarital agreements are hard to draft because they can deal with various areas of law. Estate planning and family law are the two biggies, but many different areas of property law can be affected. For instance, I recently was working on a premarital agreement, and the other attorney suggested that, if my client made contribution to his own retirement plan during his marriage, he had to make an equal contribution to his wife's retirement plan. Luckily I realized that the contribution limits for my client's retirement plan (a 401k) and his wife's plan (IRA) were not the same, so we were able to change the language in time. This is one of the reasons why I like working with a non-estate planner on a prenup, and if possible working collaboratively -- we can review the agreement from many different perspectives to make sure it "works."
The original Ali G., Slim Chance is back with another clip. Here is his view on paying taxes. In case you are wondering, IRS is the Inland Revenue Service in the UK and wherever else the Queen once ruled. God save the Queen, down with taxes.
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I spoke yesterday about the potential conflict of interest that arises when a third party (like a financial planner or accountant) refers a lot of business to an estate planner. A similar, but perhaps more serious, problem arises in the context of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and referrals.
More and more companies make their employees and/or customers sign documents stating that disputes will be settled through the ADR process. That's fair on its face, but as a practical matter, I have some questions about how this works. There are only so many ADR professionals out there -- how is the person who will handle the mediation and/or arbitration chosen? If the person is chosen by the company, then we've got a problem -- if I'm referring 100 cases a year to Bob's ADR Shop, aren't I going to be monitoring closely the outcome of those cases? And aren't I going to hire someone else if I find that Bob's ADR Shop isn't favoring my company as much as I'd like?
Carried to its logical extreme, you get situations like the one detailed in this article (thanks, Tim), about the National Arbitration Forum
