The most common probate question, and the one with the most disappointing answer. A Florida formal administration essentially never finishes in six weeks, no matter what anyone promised — and the reason is the law itself, not slow lawyers or slow courts. The timeline, phase by phase Getting appointed (weeks 1–6). Documents get gathered, the...
David Shulman
Florida gives you two main ways to probate an estate: formal administration and summary administration. Families almost always want the short one. Sometimes they’re right. Here’s how to tell. Summary administration: the short form Summary administration is available in two situations: the probate estate is worth $150,000 or less (not counting exempt property like the...
Most attorneys who handle elder law gravitate toward the planning side — Medicaid, special needs, asset protection. Jill went the other direction. Jill on why: Elder law is a broad category. It includes long-term care planning, public benefits, special needs trusts, advance directives, guardianship, and related litigation. Within that broad category, guardianship is its own...
Most “how I use AI” videos are some guy telling you to 10x your firm. This isn’t that. I had Episode 3 planned for a month, a slick walkthrough of my client intake with a made-up family and a fake estate. I hated it. So I scrapped it and made this instead: how I actually...
A widow with the death certificate, the letters of administration, and the will still got told by Apple she needed a court order to access her late husband’s photos. Thirty years of family pictures behind a login. That is where most families are right now, and almost nobody sees it coming. In this video, Jill...
The day your disabled child turns 18, you stop being their legal decision-maker. The school stops talking to you. The doctor stops talking to you. The bank, the Social Security office, the residential provider — none of them are required to acknowledge you as having any authority over your adult child. As a matter of...
Two guardianship cases can have nearly identical facts and finish on completely different timelines. The difference isn’t complexity. It’s whether anyone is fighting. Jill on what actually drives the timeline: An uncontested guardianship in Broward County, with a cooperative family and a competent petitioner, can move from filing to letters in four to six weeks....
A safe full of gold turns a simple Florida estate into a formal one before the personal representative even gets back to the car. The shortcut disappears, the duties multiply, and the family dynamics get worse because the ring money is now real money. In this Ask Jill episode, Jill R. Ginsberg and David A....