How a living trust helps avoid probate

Estate & Tax Attorney, Sonja Panajotovic, explains what a living trust is and discusses how it can help parents to avoid probate
How A Living Trust Helps Avoid Probate
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How a living trust helps avoid probate

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A living trust is an important document. It's a document that is similar to a will, only a slightly more complicated. It allows a beneficiary to avoid the probate process and it also can help minimize the estate taxes that one would pay. It's important to have a living trust because the probate process is a rather complicated and costly endeavor. Essentially what the probate process is, is a beneficiary of either the child of a decedent or a beneficiary of a will, has to go to court and ask permission from the judge to eventually have the assets transferred to the beneficiary. It can be a long and costly affair and a living trust can avoid all of that and make the transfer of the assets a lot simpler and done cost effectively.

Estate & Tax Attorney, Sonja Panajotovic, explains what a living trust is and discusses how it can help parents to avoid probate

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Sonja Panajotovic

Estate & Tax Attorney

In 1992, Ms. Panajotovic graduated from University of Colorado, Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration/Finance and with multiple honors as a scholar/athlete (tennis) and honored as Academic All Big Eight, and Scholar Athlete of the year. She earned her law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law and graduated Cum Laude, was an Associate Editor for the Law Review, and on the Dean’s List, and began her legal career as a law clerk for Magistrate Judge Margaret A. Nagle, United States District Court, Los Angeles, and as an associate at the prestigious law firm of Brobeck Phleger & Harrison LLP.

Sonja Panajotovic’s estate planning services include the preparation of documents ranging from simple wills to advanced health care directives, asset transfers and living trusts. She also counsels many of her clients on the various types of trusts such as the marital deduction trust, special needs trusts, Q-TIP trusts, and charitable remainder trusts and helps her clients coordinate their trusts with their overall estate planning needs.

 Her probate and estate practice is also designed to provide full legal services to personal representatives of decedent's estates, trustees, and guardians/conservators for minors or incapacitated adults, including all proceedings in the probate court. She aids her clients with estate and trust administration to efficiently transfer assets from decedent's trusts or estates to intended beneficiaries at death.

Guardianship, Wills and Trusts
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