#085: 3 Estate Planning Tips to Avoid Probate
Big Picture Retirement®
Devin Carroll
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2018
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
People are always talking about probate, and the many ways to avoid probate.
Probate is the legal process of figuring out who gets your stuff.
One of the biggest misconceptions about probate is that your estate does not go through probate if you have a will.
Be sure that if you have a will, your estate will go through the probate process. But here's the thing: this process doesn't apply to non-probate transfers.
For more information, visit the show notes at http://www.bigpictureretirement.net/085
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Big Picture Retirement Show does not provide specific tax, legal, or financial advice. |
| 0:05.1 | Listeners are encouraged to seek out their own advisors in these areas. |
| 0:12.9 | Hello everyone and welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show. |
| 0:16.3 | This is the podcast for anyone who is planning for or living in retirement. I'm Devin Carroll, and with me is |
| 0:22.8 | John Ross, Michael O. Howdy. So, Devin, you know, the other day, we were talking about |
| 0:33.9 | upcoming shows. Right. Yeah, we were doing a little show prep. A little show prep. And you sent |
| 0:38.9 | me an article. It was something like the five brilliant ways to avoid probate or five smart ways to |
| 0:48.5 | avoid probate or something like that. Something. My reply email to you was there were two good ways in that list, one mediocre way and two dumbass ways. |
| 1:00.7 | Right. Yes, I think that was your words. I think that was pretty much my exact words on that. Yeah. Right. But you know what? It's still a decent enough topic. Oh, it certainly is. |
| 1:10.2 | And so I thought today would be a good opportunity to point out good ways to avoid probate and bad ways. Oh, I'm going to hear this. To avoid probate. You know, not long ago, we worked on a case together. It didn't end up happening where we thought it was not a large estate, but it was a decent size of state worth up close to a million dollars. |
| 1:30.2 | And it looked like you guys were going to have to probate the estate over one $9,000 account that there were no beneficiaries left to. |
| 1:39.4 | Yeah, yeah, it happens. |
| 1:40.6 | Yeah, which was crazy. |
| 1:42.4 | So start us off, John, if you could, by talking to us about |
| 1:45.8 | what's so bad about probate. Right. And most people don't even really know what it is. |
| 1:51.8 | And in very simple terms, probate is the legal process to figure it out who gets your stuff. |
| 1:57.4 | Gotcha. That's the judge sitting there. Right. So you've got a bank account, right? It's in |
| 2:02.5 | your name. You're dead. Right. Who does the bank give the money to? Well, the bank wants to be very |
| 2:10.1 | sure that they give the money to the right people because they don't want the right people to come |
| 2:14.9 | back and say, you gave the money to the wrong people. |
| 2:18.6 | Where's my money? |
| 2:19.4 | Right. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Devin Carroll, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Devin Carroll and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.