Estate Planning and Probate in Immigrant communities

I have had the great pleasure to work on estate planning and probate matters for the past few years of my legal career. One issue that has consistently popped up is that immigrant communities have a challenging time navigating Surrogate’s Court. Surrogate’s Court is the Court that handles estate matters. Estate matters is the property left after a person dies.

Death of a person (decedent) with property requires a Surrogate’s Court matter to be opened. Once the person dies a fiduciary has to be appointed by a Court to find all the property of the decedent. The fiduciary is usually a family member such as a spouse or child. There is a Court process in appointing the fiduciary. There are also rules that regulate how the fiduciary acts and how the property is distributed. Each one of these steps requires time and that can put a family that has just suffered the shock of death in a stressful position both financially and emotionally.

Proper estate planning can help ease the burden of navigating the Surrogate’s Court process. When there is a Last Will and Testament at least the family has an understanding what the property the decedent leaving behind is. The decedent will have to appoint an Executor in the Will which is the fiduciary. That way there is an organized plan left behind for the family.

            I have noticed in my years of practice that immigrant families avoid estate planning for many reasons. The first and overwhelming one is that there is a lack of an understanding of how the legal system works in this regard. I have found a common theme that people can just leave their property to their children and that it will be handled easily in the ways that things back home, wherever home are handled.

The way that I have assessed the situation and have heard from clients is that when people immigrate to America, there are many different focuses on adjusting to their new realities. By the time a parent gets their child acclimated to school, the parent learns a new language if needed, learns how to navigate employment, colleges, and by the time an individual reaches retirement and estate planning it can feel like one more area of life that an individual needs to learn.

Estate planning can trigger anxiety about death (which is natural), anxiety about how families are formed, long-standing issues in the family and how property will be divided. Rather than wait for after death for your family to engage in all these issues, I recommend that you address these issues with your family and have conversations on estate planning together. When having these conversations some thoughts to keep in mind are: who should be executor? who has the most time, energy? Who is considered the most trustworthy? All of this is important. The more you discuss as you plan the less room there is for arguing and litigating after death.

Estate planning can be a great way to avoid your family having anxiety about how to handle your property after your death. Not only is estate planning important for navigating post death issues for your family, but creating a power of attorney, and health care proxy can remove a lot of pressure from your family.

It is quite understandable that families who do not have access to estate planning education to avoid estate planning. However, there are ways to learn more about estate planning. Please feel free to contact Zaineb Hamdan Esq. via zhamdan@hamdanlawfirmpllc.com or the website’s contact form: hamdanlawfirmpllc.com.