Hi I'm Elizabeth Talbot and I am the Estate Plan Coordinator with the Talbot Law Group in Walnut Creek, California and today I'm taking about the probate process. the probate process is when someone passes away and their assets which are worth more than 150,000 dollars need to be administered by the court because they are not held in the name of a trust or they do not have a beneficiary. so what kinds of assets would need to go through probate? so in general the home is one of the main assets that we end up probating at our firm. so that is when someone has not done a trust and placed their home in a trust but the home is owned in their named only and they have passed away. it's going to generally go to their heirs or the people named in their will because if you only have a will but not a trust your estate is still going to need to go through the probate process. so the court is going to oversee through the probate process the administration of those assets which are subject to probate. so generally that is a home or a piece of land. Sometimes it's a business interest or a commercial property. It can also be other things such as a bank account. Many people have beneficiaries listed on bank accounts even if they have not done a trust, in which case the beneficiary listing is going to take precedence and the asset is not going to need to be probate. But if an account does not have a beneficiary listing a bank accounts or another similar accounts such as a stock or bond account, is going to need to need to go through probate as well. sometimes when you have a stock accounts you have to probate each stock and each stock has to be individually appraised by the probate referee. so that is another issue that can be quite cumbersome for the administrator of the estate and the attorneys - to address all stocks owned by a person, if those stocks are not held in....so assets that do not need to go through probate generally are retirement accounts and life insurance policies. all those types of accounts generally have beneficiaries named. it is very unusual that someone will have a retirement account that needs to go through probate. we actually have a retirement that does need to go through probate because there were not beneficiaries named. this is unusual because companies will urge people to name beneficiaries so the retirement assets can go straight to beneficiaries and avoid probate. another item that often needs to go through probate which very few people will ever name a beneficiary on is their car. now, cars are often no worth a lot of money by themselves. so if someone just has a car in their estate they will not need to go through probate because most often cars alone are not worth over $150,000. But if there is a house or some other asset that pushes the estate above $150,000 and you have cars on top of that, the cars will need to go through probate. So in general the type of assets that need to be probated are real property, houses, land things like that commercial property and cars, bank accounts and stock/brokerage accounts. those are the main kinds of assets we see that need to go through probate. if you have any questions you are welcome to call our firm. talbot law group specializes in probate in contra costa county and alameda county.
