Probate Lawyer in Pompano Beach

Pompano Beach, Florida is a municipality in Broward County, beside the coast of the Atlantic Ocean just to the north of Fort Lauderdale. The adjacent Hillsboro Inlet creates part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. As of the 2010 census, 99,845 people resided there. It is situated thirty-five miles north of Miami and a main municipality of the Miami urban region. Now, Pompano Beach is amid a renovation procedure to invigorate its beachfront and historic downtown. In addition, the municipality has been registered as one of the top real estate markets, being included in CNN, Money, and the Wall Street Journalas one of the nation’s top vacation home markets. Pompano Beach Airpark is situated within the city and is home of the Goodyear Blimp Spirit of Innovation.

Criteria to Serve as a Personal Representative

A decedent’s estate is mainly managed by his or her court-selected personal representative. In Florida, the personal representative can be a person, bank, or trust company, depending on specific limitations. For instance, a person might only act as a personal representative if he or she is a Florida resident or, otherwise, if he or she is a spouse, sibling, parent, child, or other close resident of the deceased person, despite where he or she lives. Likewise, to be eligible to act as a personal representative, a trust company must be incorporated according to Florida law, and a bank must be permitted and eligible to implement fiduciary powers in Florida.

Florida Statute 733.304 states that a non-Florida resident is ineligible as a personal representative unless the individual is:

• A lawfully adopted child or adoptive parent of the deceased person;
• Related by direct consanguinity to the deceased person
• A spouse or a sibling, uncle, aunt, nephew, or niece of the deceased person, somebody related by direct consanguinity to an such individual; or
• The spouse of an individual otherwise eligible according to this section.

If the deceased person appointed a certain person/body to act as his or her personal representative in his or her legally enforced Will, the court will normally acknowledge the deceased person’s selection, so long as the individual/body is lawfully eligible to act as indicated above. If, however, the deceased person did not leave a legally enforced Will or the individual/body that he or she elected to act as a personal representative is ineligible or cannot/reluctant to act, the court will recognize Florida Statute 733.301 to decide who to select as the deceased person’s personal representative. 733.30 states that the deceased person’s living spouse has the initial right to be selected by a judge to act as his or personal representative. If the deceased person was unmarried when he or she died or if the living spouse refuses to act, the individual chosen by a majority in interest of the deceased person’s heirs will be chosen as a personal representative. If the heirs disagree as such, the court will normally select the deceased person’s heir of closet degree.