Q: My dads passed away with a will.He left the house to be split between my sister and I. Does this have to go to probate?
The house is the only thing that he had left to be split. He had no other property or anything to be taken care of.
A: Most likely, yes, the will must be probated anytime the deceased owned real estate. this is absolutley true if you have other siblings ( other than just you and your sister). In order to insure in the future that you have good "title" ( ownership) to the land/house, you should go through the probate process to give any creditors of the deceased the opportunity to assert their claims. In Tennessee, the Bureau of Tenncare must also issue a release. If these issues are never properly handled and settled, at some point in the future when you go to sell the property or borrow money against it, you will have a bigger problem trying to establish clear title. On the other hand, if your plan is to keep the property for a long time ( and you are sure you won't need to borrow money using it as collateral) it is possible to skip the probate process BUT only if you and your sister are the only children. There are statutes of limitation which also operate to bar creditor's claims, but again, this option only works if you are going to keep the property a long time. Both you and your sister are owners so remember there is the chance that you and she might have a disagreement in the future about what to do with this property.
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