Palm Beach County, FL Probate Court

Florida Probate Toolkit

7 Key Facts About Transferring Property at Death in Florida:

1. Some (most?) property can transfer directly to beneficiaries without probate or a will, such as assets with named beneficiaries like life insurance or retirement accounts, assets owned jointly with right of survivorship, and assets held in living trusts.
2. If you die with a will (testate), your property that is subject to probate will be distributed according to the instructions in your will. Your will must be submitted to probate court after your death.
3. If you die without a will (intestate), your property that goes through probate will be distributed according to Florida's intestate succession laws. Generally, your property goes to your closest relatives in a certain order of priority.
4. The probate process in most states typically takes 6-12 months. The personal representative named in your will files paperwork with the court to open probate and manages the process of inventorying assets, paying debts, and distributing property. 
5. Most states have a simplified probate procedure for small estates (under a certain amount). The estate can be transferred with an affidavit 30 days after death if there is no will. 
6. Property transferred at death receives a stepped-up cost basis, meaning the heir's capital gains tax is calculated based on the market value at the time of death rather than the decedent's original purchase price. That's a HUGE tax advantage for those with generational wealth. You can tell who writes the tax laws....
7. Most states do not have a state estate tax or inheritance tax. Federal estate tax applies to estates over $12.92 million for an individual or $25.84 million for a married couple. This means estates worth less than this amount are not subject to federal estate tax. For estates that exceed the limit, the tax rate is progressive, starting at 18% and reaching a maximum of 40%. Those estates may need to file a federal estate tax return.

Proper estate planning and asset titling (including the use of Pay on Death Deeds, available in most states) can help ease the property transfer process in Florida, that may be available in your state.

Further Reading

• How Probate Works In Florida

• How to Probate a Small Estate In Florida

• How To Get a Tax ID Number For the Estate 

• How a Probate Lawyer Can Help

• How ChatGPT Can Help

Books, Software & Electronic Forms

eForms

eForms is a relative newcomer on the Access to Justice front and does a fine job of offering filli-in forms for every state for a wide range of everyday consumer law matters. For inheritance law, they offer the following forms:

• Small Estate Affidavit for Florida: eForms offers Small Estate Affidavits for every state and provides helpful step by step videos on how to use them.
• Pay on Death Deeds: a useful document available in most states as a way of transferring real estate at death without the complexity of setting up a living trust or the drawbacks of establishing joint ownership during lifetime.

Nolo

Nolo has been explaining probate and estate planning to consumers for 40 years, and offers several fine publications. For inheritance law, they offer the following publications:

• The Executors Guide: ***** Highly Recommended ***** An indispensable guide to helping deal with what needs to happen in the days, weeks, and months after a loved one dies. The week by week step-by-step checklists are a godsend for anyone charged with handling legal affairs in the difficult days after the passing of a loved one.
• WillMaker Software: ***** Highly Recommended ***** WillMaker makes more than just wills. This software has evolved over the years to now offer a wide variety of useful estate planning documents including 
  • Pay on Death Deeds - also offered by eForms, Pay on Death deeds are included in WillMaker for free. 
  • Self Proving Affidavit - every WillMaker will includes a self-proving affidavit to make the probate process faster when the time comes.

AI Tools (ChatGPT, etc.)

AI Tools May be Able to get more information about filing in Palm Beach County, but check the results before relying on them

AI tools on the web can be a great help to legal research. Click on the prompt below to copy it, then click your favorite generative AI tool and paste it in and see what you get. For this kind of prompt, asking for current information, we suggest Google Bard as your best bet.

TRY THIS PROMPT

Where is the Probate Court for Palm Beach County, Florida, how much are the fees, and where can I download forms I may need?

Try this prompt on:
ChatGPT4 Google Bard Claude.ai

Of all the tools above:

• Googe Bard is likely to give you the most accurate, up to date answer, (as of July 2023, the last time we tested.)
• ChatGPT4 won't even answer queries like this at this time.
• Claude AI tends to give fictitious phone numbers and nonsense URLs!

Common Mistakes that AI Tools make

1. Street names get garbled. Sometimes it will be the right number but the wrong Street
2. Amounts for things like small estate limits are not updated for inflation adjustments.
   • Many states adjust limits for inflation.
   • Most AI tools miss this. 
     • But if you prompt them to check for inflation adjustments, they may get it right if you prompt them to check for it. 
3. Don't ever rely on AI for case law research. All of them fail at this, at least for now (September 2023), and are VERY prone to making up cases that don't exist.

Click here for more tips on how to use generative AI as your probate assistant.

Probate Lawyers

A local probate lawyer can take care of everything if you'd like to go that way. There are several directories of probate lawyers on the web including the following 

• Justia Delray Beach, FL Probate Lawyer Directory - Justia is one of the most established lawyer directories on the internet and has lawyers listed most jurisdictions. Some will even answer questions online.
• Nolo/Martindale Delray Beach, FL Probate Lawyer Directory
  • In your zip code is served by lawyers in the Nolo/Martindale Lawyer Directory, we offer simple form for you to give them a few details about your case and they can contact you.

Legal Aid options for Delray Beach, FL

• Florida Courts Legal Aid Information may have options to help you.