How Do out of State Assets Affect My Estate Plan?
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Transcription
We have plenty of clients that have a time share in Florida, or a second home in Michigan, or a condo in Hawaii. With clients with out of state assets, we strongly recommend that they go with the trust. The reason for that is, with a will, all the assets have to go through probate. But with out of state assets, it’s even worse because each state is like their own kingdom.
Here in Illinois, for the Illinois assets, we would have to open up a probate here in Illinois. And then we would have to open a probate in Florida for the Florida asset or call a Hawaii attorney to open up a probate in the state of Hawaii. That’s what we call multiple probates. With out of state assets a client would face or the families of that client would face multiple probates when you deal with several attorneys, several courts and the related expense to that.
The power of the trust is that we avoid those multiple probates. A trust empowers a family in each of those states to go and handle, manage or sell those assets in those particular states. That’s the real power of the trust especially with assets out of state, is that we can avoid those multiple probates.
