Imperial, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

The judge will not sent you instructions; if you are represented by lawyer in the probate, he or she will give you instructions and when the probate is ready to close, you will be entitled to fees. The fees are statutory and are a percentage of a graduated scale, the amount depends upon the dollar amount in the probate estate.

You probably need to file a small estate affidavit for both of your parents in the counties where they died. If your mother and father died with less than $50,000.00 in assets (not including their homestead real estate), you may file a small estate affidavit to transfer their assets to your name. It's unclear if you have siblings, but if you do, each of you will own equal shares of the property left behind. I recommend you contact an estate planning attorney to advise you on the specifics of your case. Good luck.

Trusts are WAY better than Wills. One of the reasons is that trusts allow you to avoid probate. The ultimate distribution might be identical, but going through probate would cost several thousand dollars, to get to that point. Trusts have other benefits, as well, including the fact that it is a private arrangement. There is no court involvement and the documents (and administration and distributions) are not part of the public record. The ONLY drawbacks to a trust are: 1) It costs more; 2) It is more complex; 3) You need to properly "fund" the trust, or it will not provide you with the maximum benefit. You should have the trust set up by an estate planning attorney. You should expect that the cost will be somewhere between $1,000-2,000. In spite of the cost, this is the only way to ensure that your objectives will be met. It also minimizes the risks of any future problems. I am working with a family right now who bought an online trust. It was not set up properly so now, probate is necessary and because of the documents that were used, a more expensive form of probate is required. The family saved $1,000 on setting up the trust, but it will now cost them more than $5,000 to probate the estate.