Estate Planning

Estate planning has many goals. Among them are:

To allow you to live out the remainder of your time
To provide for the care and support of your minor children
To insure your property passes to your heirs exactly as you intend
To minimize the chance of a will contest (a suit over what you intended)
To minimize the work those you leave behind have to do in order to close your estate (by avoiding or minimizing the time they have to spend in probate court)
To minimize or eliminate your tax liability

For more information, please click on the Estate Planning link above.

My Goal

My goals are to offer you services that will allow you to:

Understand what you have (as it relates to your probate estate)
Understand what you can do with it
Understand how you might go about that goal
Understand how to do it so that two things happen. After you are gone:
- Your family will find your affairs in order
- Your family will be spared unnecessary costs of administering your estate
- Your estate will go to the people you wanted it to go to

The Probate Court

The court system in Ohio is made up of a number of individual courts. These include such courts as municipal courts that handle low-level charges and smaller civil claims. The common pleas courts handle felony and civil cases. Domestic relations deal with marital problem. The probate court deals with:

What happens to your property after you die
Your will, or the lack of a will, and what happens when people disagree about what a will says
What happens to a person who needs someone to care for him or her (guardianship)
What happens when a person must be forced into care (commitments)
They work with tax agencies to insure taxes are paid
Probate court handles name changes

If you take the time to plan your estate, many probate court issues can be minimized or even eliminated. That's the purpose of estate planning.

For more information click on the probate link above.