A parent sets up a trust to care for a child who will need help for the rest of his life. The parent names three trustees and tells them to make every decision together. That works fine while the parent is alive and running the show. Then the parent dies, and the two trustees left...KEEP READING
A parent pays a lawyer to put together an estate plan, trusting that the lawyer will set things up correctly and keep the tax bill down for the family. The parent dies. Then the family learns the plan was drafted badly and the estate owes far more in taxes than it should. The children want...KEEP READING
A parent dies and leaves behind a vacation property that earns rental income. One person, often a surviving partner or the child who lives closest, ends up running it: taking bookings, collecting deposits, paying the bills. Everyone else in the family wants to know where the money went. That sounds like an easy question. It...KEEP READING
A family trust is supposed to make things simpler. A parent or grandparent sets one up so that when the time comes, the children receive what was left for them without a fight. But a trust is only as good as the people willing to administer it. When nobody steps forward to do that job,...KEEP READING
An executor is supposed to protect the estate. But an executor is also a person with her own property, her own bank accounts, and her own land. What happens when those two roles collide — when the person administering the estate sells something she personally owns, and the sale hurts the estate she is supposed...KEEP READING
A parent dies. Within days, two family members are at the courthouse with opposite stories. One says there was no will. The other hands the clerk a will and asks the court to admit it. The judge hears them together, admits the will, and signs an order that looks like it closes the file. But...KEEP READING
When a homeowner dies without a will, the family often assumes the mortgage dies too, or that the bank will sort things out in probate before anyone has to worry about it. That assumption can be dangerously wrong. It can land surviving family members in federal court facing foreclosure on the family home. Here is...KEEP READING
When a veteran receives VA disability pay, federal law says those funds belong to the veteran alone. But that protection gets tested the moment the money lands in a joint bank account shared with a spouse. Does mixing those payments with community funds wipe out the veteran’s separate property rights? It comes up all the...KEEP READING
When a fire destroys a building and kills the tenant, the owner naturally looks to the tenant’s estate for money. That instinct may be sound as to the underlying claim. But having a claim against an estate and having the right to challenge how that estate is probated are two very different things under Texas...KEEP READING
When your right to participate in a probate case depends on whether your divorce was valid — and that divorce is still being fought on appeal — should the probate court wait for the answer? Or can it go ahead and throw you out? That question sits at the intersection of family law and probate...KEEP READING
