Probate Lawyers in Queens

General practice lawyers always want to take on any type of case they can, because they know they can make big dollars with cases like probate and estate law. Unfortunately, specialized law like probate law is incredibly complex here in Brooklyn and has a ton of small details and opportunities available to clients if the attorney knows their way around the system properly.

When general practice lawyers tell you that they can handle probate law, just make sure you have your guard up and understand exactly how experienced they are with this specific type of legal proceeding. We’re not saying a general practice lawyer cannot ever do probate, but more often than not general practice attorneys here in Queens have a lot of trouble keeping up with probate law specialists.

Fee-based Agreements are not always a death sentence by any means, however in the legal community we’ve seen far too many times that fee-based agreements can end up with a client paying thousands of dollars for a lawyer to essentially file a few documents. Many lawyers will put fee-based agreements into their contracts without including a retainer of their services, thus allowing them to charge whatever they want for a small amount of work that might do.

Instead, if you’re going to pursue an agreement, just make sure that clauses are stipulated which include a retainer of your probate attorney services here in Queens so that you always have access to the representative you are putting in charge of your probate needs.

One thing that we see far too often is probate attorneys looking to hold funds in escrow while they are processing things for you rather than direct depositing funds into an estate account or your personal account. This is a very risky practice, because essentially it allows your attorney to hold full power of your assets for a short period of time.

Again, this practice does not necessarily mean that your attorney is Shady or sketchy, nor does it mean that it is an absolute red-flag every single time an attorney wants to use an escrow account, it is simply a situation that presents some risk to you as a client and puts power in the hands of someone who is not you, so be very careful when an attorney mentions an escrow account to know that you have all your bases covered.

These processes take a long time and probate is never simple to get completed quickly. Don’t let an attorney tell you that these proceedings can be done in a matter of hours, because the truth is that you actually would rather have an extra few days or weeks to wait to get your assets then have an attorney trying to rush through the process because they get paid at the end.

Make sure that your probate attorney here in Queen takes the time to do the job properly and considers every detail rather than rushing through the process and trying to get finished and get a paycheck.