Probate is the legal process for distributing your property after you die. Many, or all, of the products featured on this page are from our advertising partners who compensate us when you take certain ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Matthew F. Erskine is a trusts and estates attorney. Probate is a term that often sends shivers down the spine of those unfamiliar ...

Probate handles asset distribution post-death; having a will simplifies this process. Assign beneficiaries for assets like life insurance to bypass probate. Creating a trust can avoid probate, ...

Next Avenue recently asked readers to tell us the estate planning questions they’d like us to answer. We’re now back with the experts’ views on the top question on your mind, plus — as a bonus — their ...

If you’re an active real estate buyer, at some point you’ll likely come across a probate sale. Properties sold in probate court can be a good deal, as they’re often priced lower than other homes. But ...

The probate process gets a bad reputation, but it's the reality many families will face, and it's a process that can function well for some small estates. Probate is the court-supervised proceeding in ...

What is probate? Probate is the legal process for reviewing, managing and distributing someone’s estate after they die. The purpose of probate is to verify the validity of your estate plan. It ...

Q: My mother died in January 2023. My sister is the executor of her estate. When I enquire about what is going on with the probate, she gets hostile and says it's in probate court and she's waiting to ...

Charlene Rhinehart is a CPA , CFE, chair of an Illinois CPA Society committee, and has a degree in accounting and finance from DePaul University. Suzanne is a content marketer, writer, and ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...

If you’re named as an executor in a loved one’s will, you’ll be responsible for sorting out their affairs and sharing out their assets. This process is known as estate administration. This generally ...