Do you have a will? I now will need one in PA

[tobee43]

This was surprising to me, so I did some research. I read sevaral articles regarding the requirements of a Florida will, including articles on the websites of several attornies and the Florida State Bar website. I also looked through the relevant Florida law: http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statute...tle42/#Title42. Nowhere can I find any requirement that a Florida will be recorded with an attorney or anybody else. Only a requirement that a will be filed with the court after the testator's death. I don't mean to be argumentative, but I also don't want people to get incorrect information. Can you cite the law that requires a Florida will to be recorded with an attorney? Can you point to any sources that says it is required?

you are looking up the incorrect statues. if it's not recorded the contestment rate may be as high as 90%. more likely in this state; due to the elderly laws; and the fact so many elderly live here. if one does not file one it is likely and let me quote the fl atty i worked for yesterday.."if a will is not recorded and then it is contested, it is close to a 100% chance that the contesting parting will win". that's good atty 1. let's say now atty two whom i also work for and has been known in the past ,well let's just say he most certainly a good ole 300lb southern master of fighting and contesting these wills, AND while and although has been discipline by the bar on more than a few occasions for his outrageous tactics (first i want you to know that i didn't do my homework and found out after i started that he'd had been in more than a few ruffles in his day; however i love the character of him as well as he says: no court in fl would accept calif law as valid. most likely if he practiced in calif he'd be disbarred in a week. however, his clients love him and trust him and he is loyal to the death for them. it's a whole different statue driven state.

now let's bring in the bay area firm i work with, they believe all florida is crazy law wise. you can't read a few of the statues and get a real taste of how it truly goes in the court systems here, they are forever and a day changing the statues and are extremely and forever statue driven as i said. it's difficult to say the least to battle between the two, that's for another day.

i would LOVE to PM's one day when i have a moment on this present estate fl vs ca case. you may even be one of the paralegals in my brother in laws court!! (also my main source of law update from calif.) when i wasn't free lancing at least i had more computer access directly to the state and federal courts. have you considered sitting for the bar, does calif allow that?

[tobee43]

'Hub and I badly need to update our Wills, but at no time did our Estate Attorney, when we did our main Estate Planning in 2001, mention that he would record them. He has copies in his office, and we have copies at home.

Now, a sale of land to the State of Florida, our retention of a Life Estate, and a Charitable Remainder Uni-Trust were different matters. Those were recorded.

i know you and hub must have an excellent estate atty?? i know my will, although now i'm establishing and updating everything (here in florida is must be updated and recorded i believe every 2 years, although i'm not exact i know ours was @ approx 3 years and we were overdue, we have only been in flordia a few years and i'm still learning or re learning since one needs to swipe the law slate clean and think again here in fl.) we are formulating a trust since we are (thank you God ) beginning to recover financially and wanted protected to the max. i don't know why your trust doesn't include your will. your situation is awesome like to you put the trust in a trust and how long has it been since these trusts have sprung forward, a very important thought as time and things change.

calif law while you have a will defers to the trust...it just passes through. here in florida if you have the same your will would be brief and defer to the trust.

[LadyInTheRed]

Toobee43, I am not suggesting CA law should be recognized in FL. I read FL law. If I am reading the wrong law, please tell me which law requires that a will be recorded in order to be valid in FL.

[tobee43]

lady,F.S.A. 695.26...however even what you read on line today has changed. almost monthly. i assure you the estate attys i work with here would not be recording the wills for no reason. there have been way to many issues in this state on estate matters; once again due to the elderly laws. which is another mass formation of continuous statues that i invite you to review. i i will not site law as one may take what i say as legal advise. while it's been the practice to simply google a search on a legal subject from afar, the true practice of law is very different from what actually transpires in the courts, as you should be well aware of, at this time in your career. when you think you seen it all, it shows you tomorrow changes the world.

fine to continuously challenge my knowledge however, experience and seeing it happen for real has nothing to do with law or how it works, again, i'm sure you know that as well by now.

i do want to add a will is indeed a "legal document" that will be accepted by a probate court as valid. that being said, for a small charge your local probate court will accept the will for filing and hold it until probate is opened. maybe not in ca, however perhaps the attys here have fought to many family battles and wars and feels it safer for their clients position to file them.

[LadyInTheRed]

lady,F.S.A. 695.26...however even what you read on line today has changed. almost monthly. i assure you the estate attys i work with here would not be recording the wills for no reason. there have been way to many issues in this state on estate matters; once again due to the elderly laws. which is another mass formation of continuous statues that i invite you to review. i i will not site law as one may take what i say as legal advise. while it's been the practice to simply google a search on a legal subject from afar, the true practice of law is very different from what actually transpires in the courts, as you should be well aware of, at this time in your career. when you think you seen it all, it shows you tomorrow changes the world.

fine to continuously challenge my knowledge however, experience and seeing it happen for real has nothing to do with law or how it works, again, i'm sure you know that as well by now.

i do want to add a will is indeed a "legal document" that will be accepted by a probate court as valid. that being said, for a small charge your local probate court will accept the will for filing and hold it until probate is opened. maybe not in ca, however perhaps the attys here have fought to many family battles and wars and feels it safer for their clients position to file them.

I have no interest in challenging your knowlege. When I see a post by anybody stating something that does not sound right, I try to independently verify it. If I can't, I will ask that the person provide evidence of their statement.

You said:

yes, here it needs to be recorded by the estate atty

The law you cite has nothing to do with what constitutes a valid will. It has to do with recording documents conveying real property. If you had said that to convey property to a decedent's beneficiary, you must record the decedent's will, we may not be having this conversation. I have read the Florida law (linked above) on the execution requirements for a will (F.S.A. 732.502), what constitutes a self proving will (F.S.A. 732.503) and how a will is proved for purposes of administering the testator's estate (F.S.A. 732.503). I also read websites from reliable sources like the Florida Bar, Nolo Press and several Florida attorneys. I also read less reliable sources. I cannot find even a suggestion that to make a valid will you must record it with an attorney.

In our modern world, changes to the law can be found on the internet, either in the actual legislation or in court opinions. When asked to back up what you say, asking somebody to trust your experience is insufficient. I have a hard time believing that the law on what constitutes a valid will changes every month.

As to the court accepting a will for for filing, Florida law does require that the custodian of a will file the will with the court after the testator's death. I didn't come across anything about filing your will with the court during your lifetime. But, I haven't looked very far and it isn't really relevant to your intial statement.

My goal is not to prove you wrong or me right. It is too make sure information people read here is as accurate as possible. If I see something that is not accurate, I will say so and ask for verification. If, I post something that is not accurate (and I have), I hope somebody else will catch it and point it out or ask me to verify what I've said.

[LadyInTheRed]

I have now read quite a lot about Florida Trust and Estate law. It is not all that different from California law (at least not the portions I was focused on). You can execute a living trust and put your assets in the trust. You can (and should) also execute a will that "pours" any assets you didn't transfer to the trust during your life into the trust. Or, the will could give those assets to somebody other than the trust. All this is true in both FL and CA. In both states, if you die with assets that aren't in your trust, those assets pass according to your will. In both states, you can avoid a full probate, but how you do that is different. In CA, if you die with assets valued at $150,000 or less, the trustee of your trust, or whoever you designate in your will to receive the assets, can execute a declaration and deliver it to whoever has custody of the assets. There is no need to involve the court. If the assets held outside the trust are worth more than $150,000, the trustee can file a petition to have the assets declared an asset of the trust. In FL, if assets held outside the trust are worth less than $75K, a summary court procedure can be used to transfer the assets to whoever the will designates, whether to the trust or somebody else. In both states, even if all assets are in the trust, the will has to be deposited with the court, but there is no reason for the will to be probated if all of the decedent's assets were in a trust. This is a quick comparison of CA and FL law and there are many other details I have left out. Nobody should rely on this information without independenty verifying it.

The trust that AC and Hub created is different than the basic estate planning trust. It is a Charitable Remainder Unitrust. They gave assets to the trust (in this case, cash proceeds of a sale of real property apparently), but they retained the right to receive the income on those assets during their lifetime. Upon their deaths, the assests of the trust will either be distributed to one or more charities they have designated or continue in trust for the charity(ies). The trust is irrevocable and they probably received a charitable deduction on their tax returns when they created it. They cannot get the assets back or give them to somebody else in their will (unless the trust contains a power of appointment which would be limited to charity). Their need to update their will and perhaps to create a typical revocable trust is separate from the CRUT. This is how a CRUT generally works. I am sure AC and 'Hub will correct me if I got any of the details wrong.

[AngelinaCat]

i know you and hub must have an excellent estate atty?? i know my will, although now i'm establishing and updating everything (here in florida is must be updated and recorded i believe every 2 years, although i'm not exact i know ours was @ approx 3 years and we were overdue, we have only been in flordia a few years and i'm still learning or re learning since one needs to swipe the law slate clean and think again here in fl.) we are formulating a trust since we are (thank you God ) beginning to recover financially and wanted protected to the max. i don't know why your trust doesn't include your will. your situation is awesome like to you put the trust in a trust and how long has it been since these trusts have sprung forward, a very important thought as time and things change.

calif law while you have a will defers to the trust...it just passes through. here in florida if you have the same your will would be brief and defer to the trust.

We saw our Estate Attorney last August, a year ago--not last month, regarding an insurance policy belonging to the Trust. He reminded us that we needed to update our wills. But again, at no time was there any mention of them needing to be recorded.

Yes, we have been procrastinating, but we NEED to get off our duffs and DO IT. We just had a reminder of how precarious life can be. Our God-daughter's ex-husband, just died last Thursday of a massive heart attack. He was only 52. The two had remained friends and she was helping him get through all the estate matters following his mother's death in April.

He had even asked her to remarry him, and she turned him down....

[frogger]

http://www.legalzoom.com/ is your friend..............

[AngelinaCatHub]

Here is my two cents of understanding. Nobody has to have a Will by law in FL. If they die intestate, there is a default will of the State as to who gets what. Usually the married spouse is the benefactor. If none, the eldest son then on and on up to a brother, uncle, nephew or whomever survives the closest. I've never heard of a Will NEEDING to be recorded as you may write one on a death bed with witnesses. The will MUST be recorded when executed in probate. Much like BK Trustees, the Executor must petition the Judge to be released after a full accounting and distribution of assets.

A Trust does not need to be recorded either. It has to be drawn up legally though and in our case, the Charitable Remainder UnitTrust (C.R.U.T.) has to be named as it now becomes and entity in its own. Such as a person is. Upon the death of the last Gifters the named charity/s become owners of the Trust proceeds. It is wise to have a fill in Trustee to administer the funds. At that time the Trust may have to be recorded but I'm not sure of that. By law, there are only two changes that a Trustee is allowed to make. One is; a Trustee can change the beneficiary/s, add or remove. It must be a bonifide tax free charity. The second is any change due to errors to keep the Trust within the law. Income tax form is required and the Trust has it's own tax ID number. The Trust is not a taxable item but still must account for the assets. The Trustees may also deal in bettering the Trust by investing in reasonable business to increase the value. Self dealing is not allowed. 5% by law must be taken by the gifters of the Trust, but higher amounts are allowed but not changeable. We take 7%.

Here is a very good link about FL probate. I can find no requirement that the will has to be previously recorded. That should be nobodies Public Record. 'Hub

https://="http://www.floridabar.org/...E/Probate.pdf"

[tobee43]

i am going to have to stand firm on the firms i work with! they record each and every will that they do. again, i stress, there are too many contested wills in the state of florida and the attys i work for record all the ones they draw up.

now, assuming it's law on my behalf was not quite put that way. i stated every will should be recorded. although you may not see any exact statue on it; it does fall under the document statues and can absolutely be filed. again, i stress that it has be come apparent that some, since i can only speak to the offices i deal with, do in fact, and truth record the will and whether that sounds rings like truth to some that may not have the experience or exercise that practice is their own down fall. i am not a liar, i don't need or want anyone's approval on what i know as fact. in a world that we live in, there is no reasoning to not protect one to the fullest which by recording such a document with probate prior to ones death is done by all estate attys in florida or not, i will and have in fact, recorded ours and when we draw up the trust it will bypass that document. however, there will be a record. anyone can do as they chose, i have seen too many cases to count where wills did not stand up in court and i'm not about to list their case numbers but they can be googled as well very quickly.

an argument lies in should someone go through the maximum procedures to protect themselves. i believe that on should, and apparently so do the attys i do work for, and they are not connected practices.

[AngelinaCat]

There is no wording that I can find in the Florida Statues,

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0732/0732PartVContentsIndex.html&StatuteYear=2012&Title=-%3E2012-%3EChapter%20732-%3EPart%20V

stating that a will must be recorded once it is made. Once the maker of the will dies, the administrator of the estate has 10 days to submit it for probate.

This recording of wills once made, must be something that individual law firms and attorneys choose to do. I would be fearful of having one or more recorded wills on record, and the person making these things changing their minds and NOT being able to record the new one, before they pass. That would add more heartache and misery to the eventual heirs.

[AngelinaCatHub]

Whoa, Tobee.....

Has this gone too far????? I meant nothing by the question. Nobody I see in this thread has accused anyone of lying. I thought it was a question thrown up to others for answers as most are here? This thread has gone too far and I hope a Mod closes it. Nobody wins arguing about 'how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin'. I'm outa here. 'Hub