Rocky Mount North Carolina Legal Blog

The term probate actually refers to the entire court process of divvying up the assets of a person after that person's death.

However, when many Rocky Mount, North Carolina residents refer to a will being stuck in probate, they may be referring to situations in which a disgruntled family member or even a third party like a charity challenges a person's will, alleging that the will is invalid.

Estate planning is a topic that many people don't like to think about. However, all adults must ensure that they have this taken care of. The last thing that your family members need when you pass away is the stress of dividing everything. Your estate plan does a lot more than that. It can also set up a plan for what is going to happen if you are unable to make decisions for yourself.

There are several things that you need to include in your estate plan. Each serves a specific purpose. As you go through this list, you might find that you don't need some but that you do need others.

• Will: Your will outlines who is going to receive your assets. You won't cover anything that is being transferred by another method in the estate plan. When you create the will, ensure that it is done properly so that it will be valid when you pass away.
• Trusts: You can put assets into trusts to transfer them to others upon your death. There are other benefits, depending on the type of trusts you establish. A special needs trust, for example, can provide for an heir without impacting their eligibility for need- or asset-based programs. Other trusts, namely irrevocable ones, can protect the assets from creditor claims.
• Guardianship: A guardianship is critical for a parent who has minor children. This sets up a plan for who is going to care for the kids if both parents pass away. You should discuss the designation with the person who is named to ensure they are willing and able to handle this task.
• Powers of attorney: The powers of attorney place someone else in charge of making financial and medical decisions for you if you can't make them for yourself. You can name the same person for both areas. However, you don't have to. Think about who can handle each set of decisions and plan accordingly.
• Letter of intent: Your letter of intent isn't a legally binding message. Instead, it is meant to help your beneficiaries and executor to know more about your estate plan. You can write out your reasoning for the decisions you make, provide information about where specific accounts are held and note the location of important paperwork like deeds or insurance documents.
• Beneficiary designation: Some of the assets that you own are governed by the payable on death designations. You don't include these in the estate plan, but you can leave a list for the people who will handle your estate. The assets impacted are ones like bank, investment and retirement accounts, as well as life insurance policies.

A previous post on this blog talked about how what would for a private motorist probably be just a traffic ticket can be a serious affair for a commercial driver who operates trucks or other vehicles for a living.

That post pointed that in addition to facing consequences from their employer, who may have to pay higher insurance premiums because of the driver's traffic offenses, a commercial operator can lose his or her credentials for a time even over violations that seem relatively innocuous or, at worst, like one-time mistakes any driver could make.

Even for someone who does not drive for a living, a traffic ticket can spell hundreds of dollars in additional insurance premiums and can also have other consequences.

However, for commercial drivers, even one traffic ticket can be a career-killer. In many cases, even if they commit a violation in their own vehicles and on their own time, a trucker's record of violations spells higher insurance premiums for his or her employer, and that, in turn, might not be a price an employer is willing to pay to keep the trucker on staff.