When planning for the transfer of assets after death, two terms come up often: probate and trust. Probate is the court-supervised process of validating a will, paying debts and distributing assets to ...

Always name a beneficiary for your accounts so that your heirs can skip the probate process Matt Webber is an experienced personal finance writer, researcher, and editor. He has published widely on ...

Probate can be a real headache, and it’s something most folks want to dodge if they can. It’s not just about the red tape; it ...

This is the third installment of my seven-part series on major estate planning mistakes. The first two are here and here. Not avoiding probate. When an asset passes to others through a will, it has to ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...