by Tom Olofsson, Attorney at Law, www.MyTrustLawyer.com (773) 905-1193
When you give someone a gift you sign a check. When you buy a meal in a restaurant you sign a credit card receipt. When you sell your home you sign a deed.
In each of these situations it is your signature which marks that the sale has taken place.
If you wish to give assets to someone after your death something different has to happen. Since you can not sign after you have died, someone’s signature must be substituted in place of yours.
The judge, in probate court, substitutes his or her signature in place of yours. This way any money and property, which was in your name when you died, can get into the hands of the new owner.
This is one of the main purposes of the probate court.
The process is more complicated than I have described but when you boil it down, we are getting stuff out of your name and into the name of the people you let it to in your will