Ohio Probate Lawyer Blog

Despite the rise of corporate farms in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 97% of farms in this country are family-owned, and 88% of all U.S. farms are small family farms. Research suggests that most family farmers—about 80%—intend to pass their farm down to the next generation. A study out of Iowa State University indicated that half of farmers did not have an estate plan, and nearly three-quarters had not chosen a successor to take over the family farm business.

Family farmers are not alone in the tendency to put off estate planning, but that delay can have a disastrous outcome: by some estimates, fewer than a third of family farms continue into the second-generation, and only about 12% continue into the third. Lack of planning is often a primary reason.

You may imagine your children working side by side on the family farm, continuing to build the legacy you left them. Even if this rosy vision materializes, it won’t do so organically. With most businesses, including fam… Read More

Imagine if, at the moment of your death, a large portion of your assets just...vanished. Or that those assets continued to exist, but your loved ones couldn’t find them, access them, or maybe didn’t even know about them. The fruits of your labors, your careful investments, forever locked away from the people you meant to have them.

If that sounds like a nightmare scenario, you should know that it has already happened to some owners of cryptocurrency who died without creating an estate plan for their digital assets. Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset. The best known type of cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, but there are others, such as LiteCoin and Ripple.

According to the BBC, research estimates that as of early 2020, up to 3.8 million Bitcoin, with a value of about $30 billion, has been lost. Much of the loss is due to owners of the cryptocurrency dying without giving heirs a way to access these digital assets.

How Does Cryptocurrency Work?

Essentially, cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency—digital cash, if you will—that e… Read More

One of the first things many people ask when talking to an estate planning attorney is “How much does it cost to make a will?” On its face, it’s a reasonable question: legal services can be expensive, and people naturally want to know what they will be spending. But it’s not the best question to ask when you are looking to create a will or an estate plan, and it’s certainly not the first one you should be asking. And while a good estate planning attorney will let you know what to anticipate as far as the cost of your estate plan, most lawyers worth their salt won’t be able to answer this question—at least, not right off the bat.

In fact, you should be very hesitant to hire an attorney who gives you a firm answer to the question “What do you charge for a will?” It would be kind of like walking into a hospital and asking, “What do you charge for a surgery?” In that case, the answer should certainly vary depending on whether you need a mole removed or a heart-lung transplant. The hospital staff isn’t going to just give you a price. They are going to ask you questions about your health, and run tests to determine your condition. Similarly, in… Read More

People end up in court all the time because of a mistake or ambiguity in a document; one party interpreted a phrase as meaning one thing, another interpreted it differently. The court needs to decide which interpretation is correct. Or the document itself may be inconsistent, and it falls to the court to decide what was intended.

The need to interpret (and sometimes reform) a document often happens in the context of a contract dispute. But it also occurs with wills and trusts. How do Ohio courts address these mistakes or ambiguities?

Mistakes and Patent and Latent Ambiguities in Wills

To answer this question, we have to talk about the kinds of mistakes and ambiguities that arise. First, there are what lawyers call “patent ambiguities.” These are ambiguities that are obvious just from reading the document. For example, “I bequeath to my brother Daniel the sum of fifty thousand dollars ($5,000)” is patently ambiguous. Does the person making the will (the testator) mean the amount that is spelled out, or the numerical amount, which is different?

Then there are so-called “latent ambiguities.” These are statements that make sense on their fac… Read More

As this blog post is being written, and possibly as you read it, the United States is in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has led many people to think about their estate planning in light of COVID-19. The coronavirus also has many of us working and learning remotely, leading to the realization that many things we are used to having take place in person can take place electronically.

It was only a matter of time before someone tried to write a will on an electronic device, and before the validity of that will was questioned in court. In fact, such a case arose in Ohio several years ago. A man named Javier Castro dictated his will to his brother. The brother transcribed the will on an electronic tablet. Javier himself signed the will on the tablet with a stylus; two witnesses signed the tablet, affirming his signature.

In 2013, the Lorain County Probate Court ruled that the will was valid. Ohio wills are required to be in writing, and the court concluded that the electronic writing met that requirement. Ohio wills also must be witn… Read More

Estate planning attorneys have a saying: “It’s never too soon to make an estate plan, but soon, it could be too late.” That’s not just a clever slogan used to generate business, and unfortunately, the emergence of a novel coronavirus has demonstrated the truth of this expression.

The good news is that the great majority of people who contract this virus do recover (even if they must suffer some misery in the meantime). The bad news, which has been splashed across TVs, radios, newspapers, and the internet, is that some people don’t. The greatest death toll has been among the elderly, but no age group is immune.

This isn’t said to frighten you, but to empower you. If you are reading this right now, and your estate plan doesn’t fully address your needs, this is your opportunity to take steps to ensure that it does. We hope that the coronavirus does not have a serious impact on you or your family. But even if it doesn’t, you will benefit from taking these estate planning measures:

Creating a Will or Revocable Living T… Read More

These days, people move around more than ever. You might buy a house in Dayton, get transferred out of state for work, and continue to rent out the Ohio property. Or you might spend most of your life in Ohio, only to spend your later years living with an adult child in a neighboring state. Whatever the reason, there are many people who live outside of Ohio, but continue to own real property in the state. When they die, that real property needs to be disposed of. Ancillary probate in Ohio is one mechanism to deal with real property whose owner died outside of the state.

Ancillary probate is addressed in Chapter 2129 of the Ohio Revised Code. If a resident of another state dies owning property in Ohio, any interested person (usually, but not necessarily, an heir) can apply to be ancillary administrator in any county in Ohio where property of the deceased person (decedent) is located.

As a practical matter, this almost always refers to real property. Personal property such as furniture, art, jewelry, cars, etc. in Ohio will probably be gathered by the personal representative of the estate in the state where the deceased lived, and dealt with in that state's probate co… Read More

In December 2019, the president signed into law the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, better known as the SECURE Act. As the name suggests, the law is intended to make it easier for American workers to save for their retirement. Let’s examine what the SECURE Act does, and how it might affect your retirement and estate planning.

End of the “Stretch” Provision

Prior to the SECURE Act, beneficiaries of inherited IRAs and 401(k)s could “stretch” distributions out over their life expectancy. This had a couple of distinct advantages. Because required minimum distributions (RMDs) were stretched out over a longer time period, perhaps decades, that additional income to the beneficiary was less likely to bump them into a higher tax bracket. In addition, of course, beneficiaries could count on a consistent payment amount year after year.

The SECURE Act has done away with the stretch provision, at least for many people. Under the SECURE Act, if the owner of a 401(k) or IRA dies after January 1, 2020, the beneficia… Read More