ShmoopTube

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Finance a la shmoop what does it mean to die intestate and have your estate go

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into probate? alright people if you die with no will your said to have died

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intestate you're will-less sort of like a remote-controlled zombie spirit and this [Person holding remote and zombie appears]

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is bad if you had any dough left over at the end of your you know journey or at

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least bad for your would-be heirs why well because with no direction as to

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where to leave your financial leavings the state grabs it more or less thank

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you very much and if an heir does materialize well then your money has to

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go through probate which is like amature bait only it costs money so

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probate itself is the first step in dying financially or at least settling

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your state when you're you know doing backstroke Six Feet Under [Ghost man performing back stroke under the ground]

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specifically in probate proceedings the court acknowledges that your will

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whichever version your lawyers would present to the court is in fact your

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will and is representative of what you wanted your last dying wishes in giving

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away your money to be what can happen with poor estate planning well just ask

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actor James Gandolfini and well you can ask but he probably won't answer [Grave stone appears of James Gandolfini]

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Gandolfini that guy died in 2013 and when he did his family had to deal with

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two shocks the shock of his parting and the shock of how royally he had screwed

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up his estate and estate planning not giving five minutes thought to his heirs

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who you know he could have taken care of instead of everything going to

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Gandolfini's intended beneficiaries roughly thirty million dollars in taxes

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would end up going to the IRS and those guys didn't even attend the funeral [Man appears from an office desk]

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because Gandolfini hadn't been specific as to where the money went well there

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was four million in take out taxes for this probate proceeding and eight

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million for that and then he hadn't transferred a little bit of money each

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year to his heirs till all of it got taxed at a state tax rates which are

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very high and then it ended up not even actually going to the people he wanted

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like his kids and others who we loved and

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instead it went to a whole lot of government bureaucrats so yeah intestate

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is bad it puts your heirs in a difficult litigation situation forcing them to [Judge banging gavel]

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endure a ton of taxes in grief in addition to their uh you know grief

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