Probate Distribution of Assets
If you have recently lost a loved one, the responsibilities and decisions can seem overwhelming and confusing. Let us lighten your load with our 25+ years of experience; Badeaux and Associates has advised heirs on efficient asset distribution, thereby allowing them to receive the assets sooner, and saving them time and undue hardship.
When someone passes away, their assets, their “estate”, may consist of non-probate assets, (i.) life insurance proceeds, (ii) joint tenancy with right of survivorship accounts, and (iii) death benefits under retirement plans; and probate assets which are everything else.
Distributing assets is generally the last step in the probate process and it is the job of the Executor. The Executor is the individual appointed to administer the estate of a deceased person. The Executor’s main duty is to carry out the instructions and wishes of the deceased. The Executor is appointed either by the Testator of the Will (the individual who makes the Will) or by a court, in cases where there was no prior appointment.
For more information about the role of the Executor and the probate process, see the FAQs for Probate.
What We Offer
Correct advice on asset allocation and on distribution of the correct assets to the correct beneficiaries. Attorneys not experienced in probate laws, community and separate property laws, and second marriage allocations, incorrectly label; therefore incorrectly give, beneficiaries the wrong percentage of probate and non probate assets. For example if a women who is a Texas resident dies and her surviving, Texas resident husband has an IRA, the women’s “estate”, (her heirs or beneficiaries in Will) have an interest in the surviving husband’s IRA, if it was community property, even though the husband is living, and even though IRA’s belonging to the deceased are non-probate assets.
What Makes Us Unique?
While Badeaux and Associates is more than happy to assist clients with straight forward estates, Badeaux and Associates also has extensive experience in decedent estates of second marriages, mixed community assets with separate assets, inherited assets, title problem assets, family owned business assets, LLC’s, and commercial real estate.
Most decedents owned real estate, and our firm has years of extensive real estate experience transferring title after someone dies.