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The good news is that the lien foreclosure gives you a process to recover some or all of the money still owed you. The bad news is that you are going to have to deal with very complicated, tricky legal foreclosure steps to get there.

With so many lawyers out there, it’s difficult to know which is the right one for you. But you don’t have to settle for an attorney who isn’t a good fit for you or your legal matter.

The time of year is coming up for holiday travel and family gatherings. Holiday travel frequently causes clients to make a desperate last minute call to my office to make estate plans. If the call comes very close to the holiday travel date, it may not be possible to get the documents drafted in time. Attorneys like to take time off to enjoy the holidays too.

In this series of blogs, I am outlining various types of probates or probate alternatives to settle an estate and their likely costs. As I mentioned in the introduction to this series, the cost is predominantly determined by the type of procedure followed.

There is good news. If you and your spouse can agree on the parameters, it’s not too late to outline how your property will be classified, as community or separate, how your joint finances will be handled, and support for children from prior marriages —even if you’re already married.

One of the first questions the family of a loved one that has passed will ask is, 'What will it cost to settle the estate in Texas?'

If an attorney handles incorporation for you, he or she should take all of the steps necessary to set you up to go forward conducting business according to sound legal requirements to preserve the protection that is a primary goal of incorporation. This would include filing a certificate of formation with the secretary of state, drawing up initial bylaws or operating agreement (for a LLC), drawing up minutes of the organizational meeting, issuing stock or membership interests (for a LLC), and providing forms for minutes on an ongoing basis.

In a previous blog, I discussed why prenups may be beneficial to a couple marrying, whether or not they are rich and famous. A key reason to have a prenup is to contractually bind the other spouse to a plan for disposition of both estates on the death of either of them. In absence of the prenup, unless the couple draw up a joint, contractual will, each spouse is free to change their will at any time, during or following the death of the other spouse. Joint, contractual wills are rarely done.

A primary purpose of a prenup is to override provisions under state law on many of these issues. A key prenup provision is that income on separate property remains separate property rather than being community property. This is not what state law provides otherwise. Before the marriage is the best time to give serious thought to these issues. However, if you are already married, a postnuptial agreement can still be done. Learn more about postnups here.

Families frequently come to me needing to know how to figure out who gets what when a loved one dies without a will. Unfortunately, the answer is that they may be in for a lot of expense and time in a very complicated legal proceeding.