![]() If you have the legal right to inherit personal property, like money in a bank account or stocks, and the estate is worth $166,250 or less, you may NOT have to go to court. So talk to a lawyer if you are not sure. To find a lawyer, contact your local bar association's lawyer referral service or call 1-86. Generally, though, deciding if you qualify for a simple procedure may be difficult. Click on the items below for more information on these situations. Also, if you were married to, or in a registered domestic partnership with, the decedent, you may be able to follow a simple process to have your property rights determined. In addition to assets that already have a designated beneficiary (like a life insurance or a bank account), estates with a value of $166,250 or less may qualify for a non-formal probate case. It can be difficult to figure out whether you can use a simplified informal process to transfer property. Was the bank account owned by different people? Or was it to be transferred to one person upon death?īenefits like social security survivor benefits or benefits as a dependent of a deceased veteran can usually be collected without probate court. ![]() You may need to talk to a lawyer to sort out these questions. It may also be necessary to make sure that the property is in fact community property and was not somehow changed to separate property through an agreement or in some other way. If the asset was community property but there was no explicit right of survivorship, the decedent’s spouse or partner may get the decedent’s half, but it will depend on whether there is a will and the property was divided in other ways. Was the property community property with the right of survivorship? If so, the surviving spouse or partner would likely get the entire asset.Was the property owned in joint tenancy? If so, the surviving owner gets the entire property.Retirement accounts, pensions, or annuitiesĪnother important way is to figure out how the property is owned (the type of title ownership).We listed some examples earlier, but here are some common ones: That means that the decedent, when alive, named one or more people as beneficiaries to receive the asset when they died. One of the ways to decide if you can use a simplified procedure to transfer property is to figure out whether any of the assets have named beneficiaries. Figuring out if you have to go to probate court depends on many issues, like the amount of money involved, the type of property involved, and who is claiming the property. You may not need to go to probate court to obtain title to property belonging to a dead person.
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