- Welcome to Two Minute Tuesday, where I attempt to discuss an estate planning topic, in two minutes or less. Now, before we get started, if you're enjoying these videos every Tuesday, can you please do me huge favor and hit the subscribe button in the right hand corner below and click on the bell to get alerts when we post new videos every Tuesday, I would really appreciate it.

- Let's get started, first question, and this is the hardest question of the day so we're going to get it out of the way first. What is your name? What do you do for a living? And how long have you been doing that?

- My name is Steve, I am with the Cortes Law Firm and I do estate planning and probate.

- All right, how long? How long you been doing that?

- Off and on for probably 18 years now.

- Yep, and Steve's very humble so if Steve says hi my name is Steve and I'm with the Cortes Law Firm, Steve owns the Cortes Law Firm and is very knowledgeable. So let's start with the basics, what is probate in Oklahoma? And why do we have it?

- So, probate is basically, after you pass away, is figuring out what all of your assists are and kind of gathering them together and then figuring out if you owe any debt, as well. There's actually national companies that actually monitor all the probate cases and if you owe, if you died owing money to a hospital, they'll show up at court.

- And then once all of that's done the main goal is, is that better?

- Yeah

- Okay, the main goal is transferring good title to all of your assists to your heirs.

- Okay, so the question I asked the other day, which I thought was interesting is, do I need an attorney to do that? Can I go through the probate process without an attorney?

- Yes, you can pull a tooth on your own too.

- Right, and going through the probate process is kinda like pulling a tooth, is what they tell me.

- It can be. I mean you talked about going down rabbit holes and there's so many different rabbit holes that you can go down.

- Yeah.

- And people want me to give them a standard answer, and there is no standard answer because each of you are individuals and that means each of your estates is an individual estate.

- Right, is there more than one type of probate?

- Yes, there is.

- Okay, that's probably the first question.

- yeah.

- So, what types of probate are there and then lets talk about each one individually, how's that?

- Sure.

- Yep.

- Okay, so just probates in general there is what we call a summary probate, you might've heard it called a small estate probate, and then there's also regular probate. So on a summary probate your total assets have to be under $200,000, so that means the money, the equity you have in your house, your bank accounts, your cars, everything you own, is under $200,000. If we do a probate like that we can usually get it done, the law requires a minimum of 45 days, so we usually get them done between 55 and 80 days, sometimes 90 days, so it's a pretty quick process.

- Regular probate, what makes it different than a summary probate?

- So statutorily the deadlines are different, so it'll, it usually takes between six to nine months if it's a simple probate, where there's not gonna be a lot of fighting between the siblings.

- Six to nine months if there's no fighting amongst the heirs, or siblings, okay got it.

- When we do a regular probate those have to kind of almost be filed one after the other. So you first file the partition, you have a hearing, and then you have to file the next document, and then you have another hearing for that and then you have to file the next document and then have the hearing for that. So that's what takes it a little bit longer is because you have to follow that timeline and you have to file all the statutory deadlines as well. That's all for today. If you have not been able to make it to one of our live estate planning seminars and you still have questions then please give us a call or sign up for our free estate planning webinars, where you can watch from the comfort of your own home. I'm not sure if I made it under two minutes today but if you enjoyed this video then please like it below and please hit the subscribe button below or click on my face on the circle, that should be appearing right about now up here, so that you'll get our new videos every Tuesday. We appreciate you watching, and I'll see you next time. Thanks again.