Avoid probate No. 1 – Spend your money!
- Confirming a reader’s allegation that estate fights are extremely expesive and that great care should be taken to avoid them.
- Providing a first opinion in this series of columns: spend your money!
I welcome all reader feedback, including harsh ones. Referring to “ambulance chasers” as an insulting way to refer to personal injury lawyers, one reader alleged that lawyers have become “estate chasers”.
He was referring to lawyers profiting from legal fights over estates. He said “…it was lawyers that told me if the will gets contested that’s when the lawyers get rich and that estate lawyers make big money”.
Trash talking estate litigation lawyers for getting rich off contested estates is like trash talking family lawyers for getting rich off divorces or mechanics for getting rich off broken-down vehicles.
It’s not the lawyer’s fault that a legal fight has ensued.
But yes, legal fights can be extremely expensive. I agree that great care should be taken to avoid them, whether the context is estates, family separations, partnerships, contracts, and every other context where legal fights arise.
The reader challenged me to write about avoiding probate, which he identified as the problem when it comes to estate fights.
He’s got a good point. You can’t fight over an estate if there’s no estate to fight about.
I’ll explain why avoiding probate means having no estate.
The word “probate” is often used to refer to the process of obtaining an estate grant. An estate grant is a court order that authorizes someone to step in the shoes of the deceased to deal with estate assets.
When you’re alive, a power of attorney gives authority to manage financial affairs. That authority ends on your death. After death, an estate grant gives that authority.
If you have no financial affairs to manage after your death, i.e. no estate, then there’s no need for an estate grant. No need for “probate”. There can be no fight over an estate that doesn’t exist.
With no estate you have no estate fight, no probate fees and no legal fees paid to someone like me to handle the largely administrative process of applying for the estate grant.
I intend this to be the first of a series of columns about ways to avoid leaving an estate to fight over. I’ll start with the most obvious option: spend your money!
Well-known sayings come to mind. “You can’t take it with you”. “Spend it while you can enjoy it”. “Spend for memories, not for inheritances”. “Enjoy your wealth before your health runs out”.
A buddy of mine recently put it something like this when rationalizing the purchase of an expensive ATV: “You’ll never regret having spent money now on something you won’t be able to enjoy later.”
We spend our lives busting our butts to save for our retirement. It’s tough to reverse the engrained patterns of collecting nuts to tide us through a long winter.
I’m consulted by many folks who need the opposite of a savings and investment planner. They would be better served by a spending planner, projecting how much money they must spend to run out by their life expectancy. And a psychological counsellor to help work on reversing engrained nut collection patterns.
We also need businesses that cater to helping seniors spend money in creative ways. Businesses ready to recommend and arrange luxuries you’d never access while busy gathering nuts, but which become accessible when you come to terms with not taking it with you.
Not pushing anything, but helping you get your head around in-home relaxation massages, acquiring and getting trained on virtual reality equipment, a fitness makeover with equipment and training, chauffeured outings, one-on-one lessons for bridge, sourdough or anything else that might interest you, etc., etc.
You’ll never regret having spent money now on something you won’t be able to enjoy later. And you eliminate a fight over your estate.
