Assignment: Real property and probate situations.

Assignment: Real property and probate situations.

Assignment: Real property and probate situations.

Course Competency: Determine which procedures should be used in various real property and probate situations.

Instructions:

Content:

The firm’s client, Abigail Costello, who you worked with previously, would like a full estate plan to transfer her property to her son, Marcus and her daughter Alicia, when she dies. Abigail’s remaining property includes three houses, a 401(k), some stocks, bank accounts, two automobiles, jewelry, and some antiques and household furnishings. Abigail would like the transfer process to be as smooth as possible for her children when she is gone. Your supervising attorney has tasked you with drafting a memorandum that can be provided to the client explaining her options.

Your legal memo should include at the least the following information:

Explain the probate process in the event Abigail chooses to move forward with a traditional will

Explain the process of transferring Abigail’s property to her children after her death

Provide a critique of the probate process, including why Abigail might wish to use alternative estate planning mechanisms

Explain the alternative estate planning mechanisms Abigail could use, including a trust, Transfer on Death Affidavit, and beneficiary designations. You should provide the pros and cons for each of these alternatives.

Format:

Your legal memo should be 2-3 pages in length, with at least three references formatted according to Bluebook standards.

Your legal memo should contain the following sections:

Heading or Caption

Facts

Issue(s) Presented

Answer to Issue

Reasoning or Discussion

Conclusion

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.