Probate is the court-supervised process of validating a deceased person’s will. It involves identifying the person’s final assets, paying last debts and distributing property to the proper heirs. And ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...

Barclay Palmer is a creative executive with 10+ years of creating or managing premium programming and brands/businesses across various platforms. Suzanne is a content marketer, writer, and ...

Christy Bieber has a JD from UCLA School of Law and began her career as a college instructor and textbook author. She has been writing full time for over a decade with a focus on making financial and ...

Probate can be a lengthy and complex process, leaving executors eager to find ways to expedite it. Familiarizing yourself with the legal procedures and documentation required to settle an estate ...

Nothing is certain, it is said, but death and taxes. Yet, many Americans know surprisingly little about the legal process that follows a loved one’s death. A new report, titled The State of Probate in ...

Probate refers to the legal process of settling the estate of a deceased person. This process can take anywhere from a few months to a couple of years, depending on several factors such as the size ...

My mom died just over a year ago, and I’m still knee-deep in probate. I’m barely average. The typical probate process to settle a will or the estate of somebody who dies without one takes 20 months, ...

When a person dies without proper planning, their estate enters a public legal process that can last months—sometimes ...

Probate is the legal process for distributing your property after you die. Many, or all, of the products featured on this page are from our advertising partners who compensate us when you take certain ...