Do you own a vacation home in Florida? Or Farm land in Illinois? How about rental property in South Carolina? If you live in Georgia and own real property in another state, you will likely have special estate planning needs.
After death, an estate must be probated in the state where the decedent (the person who died) resided. Probate is the process, through the court, where the estate is distributed. Probate often requires the expense of hiring an attorney and can take months (if not years) to complete. If, however, the decedent owns land or a house in a state other than Georgia, the estate may be subject to ancillary probate. “Ancillary probate” is an additional probate preceding held in the state where the real property is located, but where the deceased person did not live. That means, the family would have to incur the time and expense of probating the estate in Georgia and in any other state where real property is owned even though the decedent did not live in that state.
Each state’s probate process varies. Though Georgia laws will determine how property in Georgia is distributed, the laws of the state where the real property is located will determine how that property is distributed. One simple and commonly used estate planning solution to avoid ancillary probate can be to put the out-of-state property into a trust. A trust document (similar to a Will) would need to be created and then the title of the out-of-state property would need to be properly transferred to the trust.