Need a lawyer for a will... would prefer a gun guy/2a friendly...

[EMTDAD]

just make sure you get a competent attorney.. not the shmuck my dad used who f***ed it all up, and now I'm dealing with it 10 yrs later.

 

[paul73]

make sure you get a competent attorney

thanks no thanks.

View: https://youtu.be/xSVBiM5bgL4

 

[Tartakovsky]

Don't want to give my money to leftists. Worcester county AO would be preferred. Who do you guys recommend?

Trust&Will.com. You can do everything yourself in about an hour. I set up a trust and a will. Then take the paperwork to your bank and have their notary notarize everything. Done.

 

[EJFudd]

Keith Langer, Westwood Wrentham, MA

Keith is an excellent 2A lawyer... and I'm sure he could produce a will for the OP... but estate planning is not one of his specialty practice areas.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

A house being in a Trust often adds more than the cost of probate in closing costs alone, especially if it is done incorrectly or you get multiple attorneys on the phone trying to untangle an improperly drawn Trust.

My understanding that when the final trustee of a family trust dies, the contingent trustee takes over, and there is no "closing cost" as the title holder to the property remains the trust. At that point, it's time for the formerly contingent trustee to have a contingent trustee or co-trustee added.

Am I missing anything here? Is there any "closing" that is necessary when the trustee dies but the trust remains in existence and the contngent trustee takes over?

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Trust&Will.com. You can do everything yourself in about an hour. I set up a trust and a will. Then take the paperwork to your bank and have their notary notarize everything. Done.

When you do youir own plumbing, you can turn on the water and see if anything leaks.

When you do your own electric you can at least see if the new outlets or light you added has power and is properly polarized.

With will and trusts, you have to die to find out if they were properly prepared.

My bank (Middlesex Savings) will not notarize anything that has any mention of real property. Great for notarizing out of state LTC applications, but I have to use AAA for anything related to real estate.

 

[bejay]

My understanding that when the final trustee of a family trust dies, the contingent trustee takes over, and there is no "closing cost" as the title holder to the property remains the trust. At that point, it's time for the formerly contingent trustee to have a contingent trustee or co-trustee added.

Am I missing anything here? Is there any "closing" that is necessary when the trustee dies but the trust remains in existence and the contngent trustee takes over?

Also, when the trust owner is still living but maybe not “cognizant” enough, the first contingent trustee can have a lawyer write a letter of assignment which gives him/her control of the trust. I got approval of my siblings, since order of contingent trustees hadn’t changed.
My father was the owner after my mother passed and I was first contingent. He got to the point he couldn’t/ didn’t want to write checks or handle other business (he was suffering from moderate dementia). I had a lawyer write a letter of assignment making me the primary trustee, equal to my father.
The lawyer talked with my father alone to make sure it wasn’t under duress. Satisfied, he wrote the letter. I took the letter to my dad’s banks to add me as trustee to the checking accounts. They still were in the name of the trust, but I could write checks on his behalf to pay bills, etc, but I now had to sign the check as x.y.z TTE.

 

[tinhorn]

just make sure you get a competent attorney.. not the shmuck my dad used who f***ed it all up, and now I'm dealing with it 10 yrs later.

But how the hell do you know? Since moving to MA I've been amazed at how many incompetent doctors (DOCTORS!), contractors, and tradesmen that slither throughout this state. "Get a competent attorney", "If you win the lottery you need to find a good accountant/financial advisor." Hahaha--any a**h*** who can pay the licensing fee in this state can hang out a shingle and fleece the public.

By the way, I paid $15 to become an ordained minister, and $2 for my state fortune-telling license, in case anybody needs spiritual counseling or guidance or anything. I'm legit. Really.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

I'm convinced financial advising is 80% scam. You can easily construct a portfolio anywhere on the risk curve between risk free and market with just a couple of assets, and there are some pretty good year targeting funds that shift from stocks to bonds and fixed income over time. The real gouge is the advisors who cut themselves in for a percent of your assets under advisement - even though there is no more work generating (or, in the case of larger finance houses, regurgitating) recommendations for someone with $200K vs $2M. If you have a few million in qualified and non-qualified retirement assets, you can easily find yourself paying $2000+ per hour for the time you meet with your advisor.

In almost all cases, you would be better off if you could pay an advisor $500 per hour rather than have 50 to 75 basis points skimmed off your assets every year.

It's a field with licensing requirements and needing basic intelligence, but is not cartelled like plumbing or doctoring so it is not incredibly difficult for someone to go into the field - just like how bored housewifes, people shaken out of the tech tree, etc. can get a real estate license and try to make it (and many end up wondering where all that big money everyone knows real estate agents make is).

 

[RKG]

Also, when the trust owner is still living but maybe not “cognizant” enough, the first contingent trustee can have a lawyer write a letter of assignment which gives him/her control of the trust. I got approval of my siblings, since order of contingent trustees hadn’t changed.
My father was the owner after my mother passed and I was first contingent. He got to the point he couldn’t/ didn’t want to write checks or handle other business (he was suffering from moderate dementia). I had a lawyer write a letter of assignment making me the primary trustee, equal to my father.
The lawyer talked with my father alone to make sure it wasn’t under duress. Satisfied, he wrote the letter. I took the letter to my dad’s banks to add me as trustee to the checking accounts. They still were in the name of the trust, but I could write checks on his behalf to pay bills, etc, but I now had to sign the check as x.y.z TTE.

This recitation sounds essentially correct, but needs a tad bit of refinement. Bejay, per his representation of the trust, was not a "contingent trustee" but rather nominated by the original trust deed as a "successor trustee." The letter referred to would have been the original trustee's letter resigning as trustee.

Had bejay not been nominated in the original trust, appointment of someone as a successor trustee upon the resignation of the deed-named trustee would have required an order of the Probate Court.

Trusts do not have "names" per se, as the trust is not a jural person.

Trusts are sometimes popular, and sometimes they make sense. Equally often they complicate matters unnecessarily and, since the law of trusts is arcane, lead people into making costly but unwarranted guesses as to how to proceed.

 

[RKG]

When you do youir own plumbing, you can turn on the water and see if anything leaks.

When you do your own electric you can at least see if the new outlets or light you added has power and is properly polarized.

With will and trusts, you have to die to find out if they were properly prepared.

My bank (Middlesex Savings) will not notarize anything that has any mention of real property. Great for notarizing out of state LTC applications, but I have to use AAA for anything related to real estate.

I often advise people not to use the terms "nortarize" as a transitive verb. A Notary Public is a state official, appointed by the Governor. There are a couple of dozen different acts that a Notary Public can perform, many of which are arcane (such as issuing witness suppoenae). One of the two most common acts are the administration of an statement sworn under oath, such as in affidavit. An intentionally false statement made after being sworn by a Notary Public is the felony of perjury, even though not made in court. The second is an affirmation that a deed of real property has been executed by the grantor as his "free act and deed," which affirmation is required before the Registry of Deeds will accept the deed for recording.

Since a Notary Public is obliged to exercise his Notary authority upon demand, I am surprised that Notaries at the mentioned bank uniformly refuse to certify affirmations of "free act and deed" upon deeds.

 

[RKG]

Attorneys make far more on Trust prep than Estates.

Probate in Mass generally takes as little as 7 days for most Estates. Total cost is usually about $2-3k. (Filing fees of $405 and $1500-$2500 in legal fees.) Probate ends up being more of a help than a hindrance more often than not because those assets are actually protected and pass to the heirs tax-free.

Trusts can cost anywhere from $2k-$35k and have become a brilliant racket for lawyers (and the IRS) in recent years.

A house being in a Trust often adds more than the cost of probate in closing costs alone, especially if it is done incorrectly or you get multiple attorneys on the phone trying to untangle an improperly drawn Trust.

As a financial advisor, you know that a Trust can give you asset protection or tax protection, but never both.

It is not uncommon to see average sized Estates well under the $1million estate-tax threshold have to pay 25% in Capital Gains because their attorney locked it up in the wrong type of trust and created a separate entity.

Without endorsing everything said in this post, I offer the following: If you do not understand the difference between a "revocable inter vivos trust" and a "testamentary trust," don't sign anything without competent legal advice.

 

[Amputee Marksman]

My bank (Middlesex Savings) will not notarize anything that has any mention of real property. Great for notarizing out of state LTC applications, but I have to use AAA for anything related to real estate.

Find a new bank. The job of the notary is to guarantee the signatures on the documents are valid and that is it.

 

[Mark from MA]

We did the wills and powers of atty......no real estate trust as we knew we were selling.

I think it was less than 1K or something. Local Lawyer in North Central. Brekka and Brekka

Next real estate will probably be bought in a trust.