A Washington county probate attorney can handle different types of probate proceedings although the most common are formal and informal probates. The legal processes involved in both the formal and informal probates are governed by the Minnesota Statutes and the Probate Court Rules. Let’s take a look at what informal and formal probates are:



Informal Probate

In Washington County, Minnesota, the informal probates are non-judicial in nature. This basically means that if you hire a Washington county probate attorney for a probate then they will not go through the judiciary or the court system and there will be no hearings in front of a judge. But at the same time, all types of probate documents will be filed in the court and if required they will also be made public. The only aspect to be considered is that there will be no personal appearances in the probate court.

Your Washington county probate attorney will be able to guide you through the entire process of an informal probate. The first thing that you will be required to do is fill an application form with the Washington County probate registrar or in the county where the death has actually occurred or where the assets in question are located. One of the most important things that you need to remember is that an informal probate proceeding will not have any direct involvement by the probate court but if there is any dispute then the probate court can get involved.

An informal probate can be carried out with or without any help or assistance from of a Washington county probate attorney and in such a case, the personal representative will be completely responsible for the probate proceedings. The job of the personal representative is to work in accordance with the Minnesota statute to bring the probate to its correct conclusion. The Minnesota Statute 525.07 has a clause that states the prohibition of the Registrar, Judge, or any other employee of a probate court from offering advice or counsel to the representative or even assists with filling of the forms. In most cases, the personal representative will handle the informal probate on their own and in some cases ask for assistance from a Washington county probate attorney.

Most informal probate proceedings in the Washington County are unsupervised. This basically means that a personal representative who is also known as the executor will be able to distribute the assets or the estate without any court authorization. Of course there are quite a few benefits that in an informal probate like:

1.You will be able to save time as well as money because there is zero or minimal intervention from the probate court and there are no supervisors as well

2.The division or distribution of the personal assets or the estate will be left on to the discretion of the heirs or even the personal representative

3.The proceedings of the informal probate can be converted into a supervised proceeding if required at any given point in time. This is more often the case especially when there is any conflict regarding the division of estate.