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When a loved one dies, immediate access to bank accounts is often a concern. Many assume a spouse or child can withdraw funds right away, but Michigan law does not always allow this. Access depends on account titling and prior estate planning. We advise clients in Oakland and Macomb Counties, and Southeast Michigan area, that … Read more
You thought Medicaid covered Mom’s nursing home care. It did, for as long as she was alive. Then a letter arrived from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services demanding reimbursement from her estate. The house you grew up in? It’s now at risk. Most Michigan families have no idea this is coming. They … Read more
A Michigan family paid $4,500 for a comprehensive trust-based estate plan. The attorney drafted solid documents. Mom signed everything. She filed the binder on a shelf, told the kids “everything is taken care of,” and went back to living her life. Fifteen years later, she passed away. Her three adult children opened the binder expecting … Read more
Serving as a personal representative or trustee is an honor, and a legal minefield. Michigan law imposes fiduciary duties on anyone who administers an estate or trust, and those duties come with teeth. Make the wrong call, and you’re not just inconveniencing beneficiaries. You’re exposing yourself to personal liability, meaning your own assets are on … Read more
Here’s a scenario that plays out across Southeast Michigan more often than most families expect: Mom lived her whole life in Macomb County, but she bought a condo in Florida fifteen years ago for the winters. She has three adult children, one still in Shelby Township, one in Texas, and one in California. She passes … Read more
Nobody plans to die without a will. But roughly 60% of American adults don’t have one – and Michigan families deal with the consequences of that gap every day in probate courts across the state. When a Michigan resident dies without a valid will, they die “intestate.” That doesn’t mean the state takes everything, a … Read more
When a Michigan parent passes away with both a trust and a will, someone has to step up and manage the aftermath. Often, that someone is the same person, an adult child named as both successor trustee of the parent’s trust and personal representative (executor) of the parent’s probate estate. Most people assume these are … Read more
Losing a loved one is overwhelming. Between grief, family dynamics, and the immediate demands of funeral arrangements, the last thing most people want to think about is legal paperwork. But if the person who passed owned property, held bank accounts, or left behind debts, their estate will likely need to go through probate – the … Read more
Most Michigan families walk into probate expecting a single, straightforward process. What they find instead is a system with multiple tracks – each with different levels of court involvement, cost, speed, and protection. Choosing the wrong one doesn’t just waste time and money. It can expose the personal representative to liability, invite family disputes, and … Read more
Most Michigan families don’t set out to put their loved ones through probate. But that’s exactly what happens when assets aren’t structured to transfer outside the court system, and it happens far more often than people expect. Probate is Michigan’s court-supervised process for settling an estate after someone dies. It’s public, it takes time, it … Read more