Can any one tell me what the process was when they went through probate court…I know there’s a lot of textbook answers out there but can anyone share a real experience with me.
Also is there anything that I need to be warned about or perhaps you could provide some useful tips.

I can share my own experience with you from IL, but I don’t think you want to know the answer. My father died almost 8 years ago, leaving a small Estate worth about $45,000.00.

The Probate Act is supposed to protect Executors like myself from harassment and frivolous litigation, but the Act itself is useless unless it is enforced by a honest judge.

In my case, the Estate was assigned to an incompetent hack who regularly ignored the law; required me to submit the same Final Account, over and over again for no good reason, and then invented excuses not to look at what was submitted; allowed one disgruntled beneficiary to defy 14 separate orders of the court, and then forced my father’s Estate to subsidize the delay; allowed a beneficiary to embezzle money from the Estate (because she was a “lawyer”) and allowed another attorney to extort money from the Estate.

By the time the incompetent probate judge finished “probating” the Estate, some four years after the fact, the Estate was bankrupt. So, my advice to you is the following:

(1) Before agreeing to become an Executor, convince the person who is the subject of the Will to create a Trust and then make sure all the assets of the Estate are titled to the Trust before the person dies (by doing this, you may avoid probate entirely);

(2) make sure the lawyer drafting the Will includes in the Will a clause whereby you are appointed as an Independent Executor (if you fail to do this, any beneficiary can ask a probate judge to have your “independent” status stripped from you and forcing you to undergo “supervised” administration–which basically forces you to go to court to get a judge’s permission before you sign a check, pay a bill, or do anything;

(3) have a lawyer insert a clause in the Will and Trust whereby any beneficiary who chooses to contest the Will or Trust automatically has their inheritance donated to charity (which will protect you as Executor and Trustee from frivolous litigation); and

(4) consider not being named Executor (which will save you years and years of grief if one of the beneficiaries chooses to harass you and abuse the Probate Act, while the probate judge looks the other way).

Probate is an archaic process that is supposed to help divide up a Decedent’s assets, but in reality does little more than feed lawyers and judges in the legal system at your expense. So, avoid it at all costs!

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