I'll start by saying that I will be talking to an estate attorney and will not be taking any advice herein as fact. I'm just asking to get some general information and understand my options and precautions to take.
With that out of the way, my limited research indicates there are four options:
- Allow the entire estate to go through probate and be distributed as per the will which will incur fees and/or taxes.
- Have him create a living trust and assign assets to go through that, which should avoid probate.
- Have him add me as a beneficiary on his accounts so that they can avoid probate, but my understanding is that this cannot be done with real estate or the cars.
- Add my name to the car titles and house deed with "rights of survivorship". I believe this is what he is suggesting, but I'm not sure if there are any drawbacks to this that I need to be aware of.
In case it matters, my father is divorced and I am the only child in the will. Also, the value of the estate including the house is under $1M USD.
Submitted January 01, 2019 at 12:22PM by I_eat_insects http://bit.ly/2R0h1gS
