Generation-Skipping Trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

specifically in probate proceedings the court acknowledges that your will

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gandolfini's intended beneficiaries roughly thirty million dollars in taxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

like his kids and others who we loved and

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

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

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