Estate Planning Lessons, Part 1: Ownership of Property in Another State

As noted in a prior post, the year 2012 was a difficult one for me personally with the loss of both my parents. It has been emotional and trying to deal with the losses and then, on top of that, try to work through their estates with two different sets of family. This is the first post conveying some of the lessons I’ve learned in my continuing attempt to educate others about the need to work with someone to properly plan your estate.

Even the family of an estate planning attorney can be unprepared for an unexpected event. A week before my father’s death I found out that he owned property in North Dakota.  It turns out that my great grandfather had land there and divided it up between his children who did the same all the way down the line so that now my siblings and I own a piece of North Dakota land. At least we will own it once we go through the probate process and have the deed changed to our names.

You may think “Well, you’re an estate planning attorney so can’t you just take care of that?” Unfortunately for us, I can’t as I’m not licensed in North Dakota. So, now we will need to hire a North Dakota attorney several thousand dollars to get the property into our names. No, the irony is not lost on me.

So, this post is to urge you to talk to your loved ones about what you own or ask what they may own so that you can properly manage things now before it’s too late. If I would have known about the North Dakota property earlier, I would have urged my Dad to get a trust and deed the property into it so that we would now be able to avoid the hassle, expense and pain of going through probate in another state.