Are you interested in keeping your estate out of the public record and ensuring that the distribution of assets moves through smoothly? Probate is expensive as well as time consuming, which is one of the top reasons why people schedule consultations with Pasadena estate planning lawyers to discuss how to avoid it. 
A properly structured estate plan can do a great deal of the leg work in minimizing your loved ones’ chances of having to go through probate. Unfortunately, probate might only become an issue for your family after the fact when you have passed away and you won’t be around to rectify these issues or to speed things up.
You can do some of the homework now to minimize the impact on your loved ones and to make it that much easier. If you don’t have a will at all, then the probate process could even become excruciating for your loved ones since it’s guided by the state’s legal standards for determining what happens to your property and there’s no guarantee that the judge’s decision is in line with what you would have selected. In the best case scenario, probate still takes a tremendous amount of time and is expensive.
Most probated cases will take six months or longer to complete and the property cannot be transferred out of the estate until probate has been completed. Thankfully, a consultation with a Pasadena estate planning lawyer is your first stop to determine which of the following strategies is most beneficial for helping you and your loved ones avoid probate. These are some of the most inexpensive, commonly used, as well as effective tools for keeping your estate and your beneficiaries out of the headaches of probate.
• Proper titling using tenancy by the entirety or joint tenancy with rights of survivorship.
• Designating beneficiaries for brokerage and life insurance accounts.
• Establish and funding a living trust.
• Giving away gifts while you’re still alive.
• Using the life estate.
All of these estate planning tools are complex and require strict adherence to existing laws. You need the support of an estate planning attorney to help.
