Rule, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

In Texas there are a couple of questions that need to be asked. Was the house community or separate property? Next are there children outside this marriage, such as a previous marriage? Since you say it is your mother and father, I will answer as if your sisters are also the product of this marriage. If the house is community property, it belongs to your mother. If the house was your father's separate property, it belongs to you children. She however, has the right to live in it all of her life. Whether her stay in the nursing home is sufficient to remove that right, is a whole different question.

Yes. You can set up multiple living trusts. However, what I have done in the past is to set up one living trust, and then have multiple irrevocable sub trusts. Each sub trust provides that upon a sale of the asset (i.e. real property) that the trust owns, unless a 1031 exchange occurs, the Irrevocable sub trust is terminated. The sole beneficiary of the irrevocable sub trust is the primary revocable living trust. If you (i.e. the trustee) want to buy one or more other properties, you just create a new irrevocable sub trust. I first began using this method with a client who owned multiple preschools, and the real property upon which they were located. Even with insurance, there is substantial risk of liability based upon the acts of employees, or just rumors about the school. In the 1980's commercial trustees lobbied for changes in the liability of trustees of California trust estates following changes in the law that required remediation of contaminated real property in California. Commercial trustees found themselves with unlimited liability when they merely held title to a parcel of real property that had been leased to a company that caused the contamination, or upon which contamination had migrated. There were others who were responsible for the contamination, but in many cases the companies not longer existed or did not have the resources to perform the remediation and filed bankruptcy.

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.