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| PROBATE: "CHEAP AND EASY IN OUR STATE" SOURCE: RECER EXPERIENCE AND EL PASO HERALD-POST When, in April of 1991, I began conducting the personal estate planning sessions after the first Basic Donor Seminar we did for the Armed Services YMCA in El Paso, I asked the "Y" personnel if they could provide me a list of local attorneys so I could provide the names to my counselees. The Director replied, "I don't know any estate planning attorneys. Will you help us locate some?" Assenting, I looked in the yellow pages and found a listing of attorneys who are "Board Certified in Estate Planning and Probate" by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Among those listed, I recognized the name of a classmate from undergraduate college days. I called him, renewed our acquaintance ... and told him about my purpose. He graciously offered to come over to the hotel, pick me up, take me to dinner and provide any assistance I needed. We stopped at his office where he showed me his personally programmed estate planning computer program and other indicators of his work in the field. He claimed to be doing 600 probates per year. I asked if he ever did any living revocable trusts (to avoid probate) and he replied: "No need to. Texas probate is so quick, easy, simple and economical that there is little need for living trusts." He then proceeded to tell me that, in Texas, you can self-administer the probate and therefore, you do not need to get the judge's permission all along the way. His defense of the Texas probate system was lengthy, emphatic and detailed. When we parted, I thought about his defense of the Texas probate system and I said to myself, "That's wonderful. I am so glad to know that there is a state where probate is no problem. When I present the seminar later this week, I may just 'soft pedal' the living trust because, according to my fellow alumnus, probate is so simple here that there is little need to avoid it." Arriving early, as is my custom, for the seminar on Saturday morning, I arranged chairs, focused the projector, prepared the schedule of follow-up visits and, then, took a breather while the crowd gathered. A copy of the day's El Paso Herald-Post had been delivered to the desk near where I was sitting, so I picked up the newspaper and glanced at it. Page one of the April 6, 1991 edition carried the following story: "Commissioner Charles Hooten had a good idea about how to use a court master to clean up the probate mess in the five county Courts-At-Law. "He tried to boost the notion to pay a court master around $65,000 per year to do the job rather than to load up taxpayers with a sixth county Court-At-Law judge, at $86,000 plus. "But Hooten was out voted in what resulted in an academic exercise anyway because commissioners don't have enough new revenues for a sixth judge anyway. "Hooten, however, thinks he might have another idea for how to get cobwebs off the probate piles the judges are so squeamish about. "He says there's a law requiring judges to formally perform reviews on their stashes of probate cases, and Hooten wants to find out which judges are doing their duties. "Probate matters have been sensitive since last year when one of the local brethren was indicted and de-benched in a scheme where several estates under his judicial care were ripped off." Needless to say, I revised my plans and gave the people my usual dose of anti-probate medicine during the seminar. See also, Living Revocable Trust |
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