Serving Southern Mississippi
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Wills and Estates
Protecting what's Important
Estate Planning:
Careful estate planning can protect your assets during your lifetime and preserve your estate for your heirs and other beneficiaries after your death. A well thought out and personally tailored estate plan can insure your assets are distributed as you intended after your death while minimizing administrative costs, transfer costs, and taxes. An estate plan can also protect wealth from the claims of creditors, lawsuit, or bankruptcy.
Your estate plan may very well be the utmost critical set of legal documents you will ever sign. With a well drafted estate plan you can:
- Control the distribution of your property at the time of your death
- Designate a guardian for children
- Reduce the costs of probate or eliminate the need for probate altogether
- Reduce wealth transfer taxes at death
- Preserve wealth and the conserve of assets both during life and after death
- Protect your estate and your heirs’ inheritance from creditor claims or divorce
Come and see Smith & Choudoir Law PLLC to have a Will, Power of Attorney, or Health Care Document drawn up to plan for your estate.
Estate Administration
After a loved one dies, their assets must be distributed to their intended beneficiaries. Probate is the court process for transferring property from a deceased person to living people.
The process is used whether a person died with a will (testate) or without a will (intestate). A probate court case is necessary in Mississippi when a person dies leaving at least $50,000 of probatable assets. Probatable assets are property that is not transferred automatically upon the death of the owner. Examples of probatable assets are bank accounts with no joint owner or pay-on-death (POD) beneficiary, real estate held solely in one person’s name, or held “in common” with someone else, automobiles, artwork, collections, furniture, farm equipment, and all other personal property.
Smith & Choudoir Law PLCC provides probate services to insure smooth and easy transition of property after a loved one passes. We also help our clients contest wills and fight for their rightful inheritance. Our experienced lawyers assure that will contests and probate challenges are handled efficiently and fairly for our clients. Call us to see if we can help you with your Mississippi Probate.