[Villages Kahuna]

...you wouldn't hesitate to make sure that your documents were valid under Florida law. I had all our documents--family trust, wills, medical and durable powers-of-attorney, redrawn here by McLin & Burnsed. It was done for a fraction of the cost of having a very modest estate of a relative probated in Michigan...a very small fraction.

One thing that you may not realize...that I found out the hard way...is that when an estate is probated, there are people who make a living as "heir finders". When the estate is filed and advertised, these people use the internet and genealogical software to identify possible heirs. They then contact the heirs, estimate how much they might get as a part of the settlement, and offer to represent them in probate court for a fee of one-third of anything they can get. In my case, the heir finder did find a couple of relatives who had the same standing as the beneficiaries, reducing their inheritance by--in this case--fifty percent.

My probate lawyer there cited an example of a recent case there where an heir finder found eleven cousins in eastern Europe, reducing the inheritance of the person who had cared for the deceased for over twenty years to only 1/12 of what he expected to be awarded.

As I've suggested, getting your documents in good legal order in your state of residence is a very inexpensive investment. And once done, your documents should probably be reviewed periodically to assure that they don't need to me amended if there is a change in the governing law. In addition, by avoiding probate, your heirs will be able to settle the estate quickly. It took me over six months to settle an estate substantially less than six figures, at a cost of about 6% of the estate.

I'm not a lawyer.