Disputes and Estate Litigation Attorney in San Mateo, California

Minimizing Estate from Being Litigated After Death

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Well, we touched on this a little bit, and that is really to open up the discussion. Estates are lost not for lack of estate planning or financial planning or even tax planning. They’re lost for lack of mentoring. So not all children are equal. Not in my family, probably not in your family. And so we want to address those differences. And if – we can’t always avoid the conflict down the road, especially when we have family-run businesses where some of the children may be involved in the family business and others not, yet there’s an intention that they all share equally.

Well, it’s very difficult to share equally. You can share equitably. And there’s a difference between the two. So opening that discussion during lifetime is one way to do it. After the death, if it hasn’t had a discussion on this issue, the succession planning for the business and the estate is something that starts almost immediately. We are promoters of a developing area of law that is private adjudication. Most families can’t afford litigation. It’s very, very expensive. Forensic accounting, capacity experts, discovery, depositions. Most families can’t afford litigation.

A modest estate’s not gonna get the same attention. The larger estates often do draw that attention. And in this society we live in around here, litigation is becoming more apparent because we have unprecedented growth and value of assets. We have now the largest exemption against estate taxes. So it’s promoting more attention, especially for the attorney who’s willing to take on that litigation on a contingency-fee basis.

California estate planing and litigation attorney, Paul Barulich, explains how to avoid estate litigation.

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