Sometimes third parties who had no knowledge of a family’s probate proceeding and wouldn’t have had standing to intervene anyway, are nonetheless adversely impacted by legally improper (and usually self serving) orders entered in these proceedings. In a lot of ways, when third parties are confronted with probate orders that are facially invalid, challenging the merits of the order is the easy part. The hard part is getting past all of the procedural hurdles protecting…

I don’t usually post this sort of thing. But this year is different. “The many restrictions due to COVID-19 have stripped the ‘happy’ from our Memorial Day, perhaps reminding us that without neighborhood barbecues and retail bonanzas, the day is really about what the small town of Waterloo began,” Army spouse Frances Tilney Burke of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in a column published in InsideSources.com. “The silver lining of our quarantines, our solitude,…

Most probate proceedings are uncontested family affairs. In almost all respects that’s a good thing. There’s one downside, however. Because there’s no one contesting anything (and thus keeping everyone on their toes), mistakes happen. For example, a family might consent to a homestead order that’s actually contrary to the decedent’s will. If everyone impacted by the mistake agrees to undo it (or live with it), no harm no foul. On the other hand, fixing a…

In 1951 Florida added a provision to its Probate Code automatically cutting divorced spouses out of each others’ wills (F.S. 732.507(2)). In 1989 a similar provision was added to our Trust Code (F.S. 736.1105). And in 2012 the post-divorce automatic revocation rule was extended to non-probate transfers, such as pay-on-death payments from life insurance policies, annuities, employee benefit plans, and IRAs (F.S. 732.703, which I wrote about here when first…

When Janet Reno executed a trust in 2008, it was just a few years after she’d concluded her run as the second-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history. And what was top of mind for her? It wasn’t some grand plan to immortalize herself. Based on the text of her trust agreement, her focus was on what would happen to the family home once she was gone. The Reno home: When her mother died…

In Re: Estate of John E. Robinson, — So.3d —-, 2020 WL 697795 (Fla. 3d DCA February 12, 2020) If a man dies intestate, any children he had while married are automatically considered his heirs, and entitled to a share of his estate as determined by F.S. 732.103. Not so for out-of-wedlock children. If those heirs want to claim a share of their father’s estate, and someone objects, they’re required to prosecute…

Samad v. Pla, — So.3d —-, 2019 WL 1212338 (Fla. 2d DCA March 15, 2019) One of the basic building blocks of Florida probate law is the mandatory life estate in homestead property all surviving spouses are entitled to under F.S. 732.401(1). Life estates are supposed to protect surviving spouses by guaranteeing them the “rent free” use of their homes for life. As explained in a provocative 2007 Florida Bar Journal article entitled…