Cherry Hill NJ Probate & Estate Administration Law Blog

When your small business is dependent upon you for daily actions and activities, you need to ensure that you have a plan in place just in case something happens to you. A business that is dependent on an owner will likely go under if that owner passes away suddenly. This can mean a tragic outcome for your company, and it might also be a tragedy for your family members if they're counting on the company for income.

One of the most important steps you can take is to have a succession plan in place. This provides the steps your company will take in order to transition it to the new normal. You have to determine whether you are going to transfer the company to another person, such as a family member, or whether you are going to have it sold to an outside entity. No matter which plan you set, you must ensure that there are instructions for how the company will run in your absence.

Being an estate administrator means that you are responsible for paying the bills of the estate. Sometimes, the heirs think that they have to be the ones who take care of these bills; however, this isn't the case. Unscrupulous bill collectors might try to trick them into paying, but they should only tell the creditors to contact the administrator for payment.

It is a good idea to find out what bills the estate has as soon as possible. You have to divide them into two categories – final bills and administrative expenses. The final bills are the ones that will only have to be paid once. The administrative expenses are the recurring bills that will need to be paid for as long as the estate is still in probate.

One of the decisions you have to make when you are creating an estate plan is whether you are going to establish a trust or not. There are many different types of trusts; however, they all fall into one of two possible categories. They are established as either revocable or irrevocable.

A trust is an estate planning tool that makes it easier to transfer assets to your heirs. Unlike the will, assets that are held in trusts don't go through the probate process. Instead, they move to the heir through a trustee.

Contesting a will is something that must only occur if you are certain that you are prepared to handle the drawbacks and feel that the benefits outweigh them. You have to ensure that the desire to contest the will isn't being done as an emotional reaction to your loved one's passing. While you are trying to determine how to handle the situation, there are several things you should consider.

One of the most important things that you need to consider is how the challenge is going to impact your family. Because this is going to pit some family members against others, there are bound to be some hard feelings. These might not go away quickly, and some can remain forever. Make sure that what you are trying to walk away with is worth losing some of your family members.