by Boyd Johnson on February 8, 2010
Beginning tomorrow (2/9), I’ll be blogging through a multi-week series on how to grow a probate practice.
Whether you are just starting out as a lawyer, you are looking to branch out into a new practice area, or you are a seasoned probate attorney looking for a few tips to increase your business, I plan to share practical insights on how you can grow a probate practice.
About three years ago I began to focus my practice on probate and trust administrations (and related tax returns). Since then, I’ve worked on nearly 80 such cases and consulted with attorneys on even more.
I’m going to tell you how I did it.
I mainly have in mind how to grow a Minnesota probate practice, but generally these tips will help an attorney in any state.
At this point, I plan on publishing the following successive posts on Tuesdays (one per week), but I may adjust this as I go:
- Don’t Start Until You Have These Tools
- How to Make the Phone Ring with Business
- You Must be an Expert (and How to Become One)
- Forgot Paralegals (for now)
- Lone-Ranger Probate Attorney? Don’t Even Try It.
Some of the posts may be a bit controversial (did #4 get under your skin?). That’s ok. If you have a different opinion, join the conversation in the comments and perhaps everyone will get more out of it.
If you don’t already receive updates to this blog automatically, this is a good time to start. There are two ways to get updates automatically. If you have a feed reader, subscribe to this blog’s feed by clicking here (or entering http://mnestatelaw.com/feed/ in your feed reader).
The other way is to get updates by email. You can do so by clicking here. I never spam you, never give out your email address, and you can easily unsubscribe to stop receiving the emails anytime you want. If you do this option, be sure to watch for a confirmation email that will get sent to you before you are fully subscribed. Sometimes this gets caught in people’s spam filters. If you don’t respond to the confirmation email, you won’t be subscribed.
So get signed up so you don’t miss anything and we’ll start tomorrow…
Categorized in Probate Practice and tagged as probate
by Boyd Johnson on February 5, 2010
Hennepin County announced today that beginning Monday (2/8), the procedure for obtaining estate letters will change for formal probates. Previously, the estate letters (Letters Testamentary or Letters of General Administration) issued from the “Estate Desk” (i.e. the staff behind the counter). Now, the Letters will issue from the Registrars.
According to the notice issued from Alonna Warns by email, in order to expedite the process for receiving the estate’s letters, you should ensure that at the formal hearing you provide the following (quoting):
- Proposed Letters
- Acceptance and Oath
- Preapproval of any demand for bond
Note especially that you should bring in your own copy of the Letters you want signed. Previously, you never needed to bring in proposed Letters for a probate in Hennepin County, but you could if you wanted.
The second item isn’t new. It has always been my practice to submit the Acceptance and Oath along with the Petition or, at the latest, to submit it at the hearing. If your proposed PR is signing the Petition, it should be easy enough to go ahead and have the proposed PR sign the Acceptance and Oath too.
The item “preapproval of any demand for bond” is probably not worded correctly. Demands for bond don’t require pre-approval in the probate code that I’m aware of. I take this to mean that if there is a demand for bond on file, you should bring with you some sort of documentation that your personal representative has been pre-approved. Until this is confirmed, you should contact the Court to determine precisely what is required. [Add a comment below if you find out something.]
As I’ve discussed before, once you’ve had the hearing and turned in the documents above, the easiest way to check on the status of the issuance of the Letters is to check mncourts.gov/publicaccess. If the Order appointing your personal representative has been entered but the Letters have not, it could be that you haven’t submitted the appropriate documents (e.g. bond or Acceptance and Oath). Contact the referee’s clerk to determine the issue. If both the Order and Letters have been entered but you haven’t received the Letters, contact one of the Registrar’s to determine the issue.
Categorized in Court Announcements and tagged as formal, Hennepin, letters of general administration, letters testamentary, probate
Sample slides for an estate planning presentation
November 6, 2009I recently gave a presentation at Bethlehem Baptist Church on estate planning issues for seniors. The slideshare presentation linked below is a version of the slides I created and used. I’m providing them here in case someone finds it helpful in creating their own estate planning presentation.
As you can see by flipping through the slides, [...]