Services for Complicated Estates

Complicated estates often require expertise outside of traditional estate planning. Complicated estates can include things like foreign assets, offshore assets, and disputed assets. Broadly, if you have or think you have property outside the US, or there’s a current legal dispute over a significant asset you intend to include in your estate, you have a complicated estate. This also applies if you got married or divorced overseas, or have relatives outside the country that you want to leave assets to.

One of the major hurdles in complicated estate planning is getting documents from different courts recognized and respected in the court that’s actually handling the estate. If, for example, there’s a divorce decree in California, but a piece of property is in Romania, how do you assure that one court will listen to the other? The brief answer is that California courts will provide us with certified copies, but a further stamp is required, which is acquired at the Office of the Apostille. This function relies on very old international treaties, to which most nations are signatories, but it also requires a law firm like us, that has worked with the Apostille before. In California, there’s one office in Sacramento and one in Los Angeles, and of course there are specific procedures they require.

Similarly, what if you need a document to be signed overseas, but recognized in US courts? This is done through the notary office of the local consulate, and it helps a lot to have a firm that’s familiar with local legal rules about both the subject matter and consulate services. For example, divorces in India can differ substantially depending on the religion of the parties involved, differences which are often not well understood by California courts, and so a divorce that isn’t properly notarized and introduced can create a lot of questions about who really owns a piece of property located here.

Further, often contested assets are included in estate planning without any extra planning. This is a bad idea, since mistakes in estate planning can and do result in serious criminal charges, and further, planning for an uncertain asset may throw the rest of the estate plan into confusion if the asset doesn’t make it through. A good example here is a boundary dispute with a neighbor for the plot containing the family home. If a neighbor is looking for an easement or right to pass over property, the value of the property could be significantly reduced after estate planning but before the property passes. If the estate plan was to sell the house and split the proceeds, it might be a better idea to file to quiet title now, or at the least to provide provisions for a reduced value or contested easement in the estate planning documents.

A more extreme but not unheard-of case is when a family member who is named as a trustee or executor in a will or trust is being prosecuted for crimes that involve dishonesty. If, for example, a favored cousin is being charged with fraud, having that person administer the estate will greatly increase the chances that the estate will be contested, and the heirs will have to go through significant litigation before getting anything. A particularly nasty fight between family members that’s already in court or soon will be should also affect estate planning, and for that you need a firm that understands how family law or criminal law works.

If you’re interested in having Verbeck Law help with estate planning for your complicated estate, please fill out the form below. It’s confidential, of course, and we’ll respond to you with plans and a quote for your particular situation.