Pieter George Van Dien

Probate is often thought of as the formal estate settlement process. In practice, however, probate encompasses a number of legal areas including postmortem trust settlement, asset transfer and retitling, making postmortem tax elections, preparing estate tax returns and estate & trust income tax returns, paying creditors, distributing property to beneficiaries, making accountings and sending required notices, establishing resulting trusts, and generally settling a decedent's affairs after passin

Creation of a power of attorney should be considered in any estate planning process. Generally, a power of attorney names an agent to handle financial matters for a principal. A health care power may also be created although that is typically done in a separate document.