Attorneys Archives - Newton Kight, LLP

Attorneys in Snohomish County

Experienced- This term means our lawyers have witnessed the broad spectrum of the legal landscape each client brings to the table. Our lawyers advice may touch on other areas of the law the client may not recognize exist.

attorney henry newton — Henry Newton has been a member of the Washington State bar for 63 years.

It also means we often times project likely results based on years of work in and out of courtrooms. With each client a touchstone of care includes the recognition what we do will impact the client and his or her family for years to come.

Because our lawyers are experienced, the quality of care each client receives at Newton Kight LLP is superior in the following fields; Guardianship, Elder Law, Wills and Trusts, Estate Planning, Probate, Litigation, Personal Injury, Landlord Tenant Issues, the spectrum of Family Law including adoption, paternity, prenuptial agreements, and divorce, as well as business formation. Often we find these fields overlap.

Depth of Character- Many of the lawyers in our firm are the sons and daughters of lawyers who practiced before them. We were born to this profession, and the character of earlier generations lives on here.

Our attorney’s put the client first, weighing their immediate concerns within the broad complex legal landscape that we all now live in.

Affordable- It is not unusual for our client’s to finish the legal project or resolve the legal problem presented and find the cost to be more modest than expected. A reasonable fee is part of the experience and character of our firm.

Litigation is by its nature more expensive. We are careful to recognize this fact and weigh, with the client, the costs of how to resolve any particular conflict.

Accessible- Located in downtown Everett, with ample parking our firm is an easy drive from Seattle, Bellevue and Mount Vernon and points east and west.

We would be happy to talk to you first before any commitment to hire us is made, so give us a call at 425-259-5106.

Click Here for a list of our Attorneys and Legal Services.

The Reading of the Will, by M. Geoffrey Jones – Part 3

In this segment, Mr. Jones takes up the declarations by fear mongers that absent their usually expensive and often unnecessary services, someone else, usually the court, will decide who gets your property when you die.

“Don’t Let the Courts Decide Who Will Receive Your Property”

Over the years, I have occasionally noticed an advertisement in the local newspapers inviting people to a “A Free Seminar” on the advantages of a Living Trust as a means for Avoiding Probate. The advertisement preys upon the fears of most lay people of the myth that probate is always a lengthy and expensive process which is to be avoided at all costs.

judge image — Judge Unwinding Your Estate

The ad features a picture of a Judge-like figure (i.e. older gentleman in a black robe and wielding a gavel) who announces: Don’t Let The Court Decide Who Will Receive Your Property When You’re Gone. The ad is intended to frighten people into showing up for “A Free Seminar” where they will be lectured for three hours about the advantages of Living Trusts as a probate avoidance device. They would then be coerced into agreeing to pony up $2,500 to the purveyors of this product for a one size fits all Living Trust kit, in a faux leather bound notebook with their names embossed on it in gold colored paint.

The hawkers of these Living Trust kits exploit peoples fears about the probate process as a way to sell their merchandise. The fear is based on a myth that somehow through the mysterious process of probate, the Courts will make the decisions about who will become the beneficiaries of a persons estate. These customers are sold a Living Trust package that they likely don’t need, and in most case won’t even use for the administration of their estate, to avoid this from happening to their family and loved ones.

The fact is that the Court has no part in deciding who the beneficiaries and devisees of a person’s estate will be. If a person has made a valid Last Will and Testament, then that document will be the sole means for determining the beneficiaries of that persons estate. If the deceased fails to make a Will, (and has made no other quasi-testamentary provisions for the transfer of their assets on death such as a community property agreement or a joint tenancy with right of survivorship account), then the laws of intestate succession (primarily RCW 11.04.015) will determine who the heirs of the Estate will be. This is a determination made by the legislature – NOT THE COURTS – that in the absence of a valid Will, an intestate estate will pass to the decedent=s nearest living relatives by order of nearest consanguinity.

The Court, through the probate process, has a very small role in such decisions. Except to the extent there is some ambiguity in the Will or some controversy in determining who an intestate persons nearest relatives might be the probate process only dictates the mechanics of making sure that the decedent’s valid debts are paid first, and then that there is an orderly process for marshaling of assets and the transition of a persons wealth and property to his named beneficiaries or intestate heirs.

Its a travesty that hundreds of thousands of people have been sold one of these Living Trust packages over the years bas

ed on this myth that the Court will some how play a significant role in deciding who the beneficiaries of a persons estate will be.

Next Segment: If you have no spouse or children and you die without a Will, your estate will go to the government.

The Reading of the Will, by M. Geoffrey Jones

In this segment, part 2 of a three part series, Mr. Jones picks up on the fictions surrounding the disclosure of the last will and testament of someone who has died, and relates Washington law on the topic.

One of the most common myths that is still deeply embedded in many lay people’s perceptions about probate is the idea of a ceremony for the “Reading of the Will”.

A Normal Setting for Reading of the Will

They picture a dramatic scene in which the lawyer assembles together all of the family and interested persons (invariably including the decedent’s longtime manservant) and reads aloud the Last Will and Testament of the deceased, unveiling for the first time the testator’s last words about who is to receive the various assets of his estate.

Everyone gasps as it is revealed that the deceased millionaire has disinherited his greedy nieces and nephews and left his entire fortune to the butler, whom the testator discloses is really his bastard son from an illicit affair he had with the upstairs maid 30 years before. While such a scene does lend drama, human emotion and mystery to the probate process, it is purely an invention of Hollywood movies. In 25 years of probate practice, I’ve never conducted a “reading of the Will” nor have I ever found an attorney who has done this.

The probate code is actually silent on the question of how the contents of a Will is to be revealed to the interested parties. RCW 11.20.010 imposes a duty on any person having in their possession, an Original Will, to either file it with the Court or deliver it to the named executor (who must then file it with the Court) within 40 days of the death of the testator.

There is then a process set forth in some detail for applying to the Court to probate the Will and appoint a Personal Representative of the Estate. Once the Personal Representative has been appointed, RCW 11.28.237 requires the Personal Representative to mail or personally serve a notice of the pendency of the probate to all heirs and beneficiaries. However, it doesn’t specifically require that a copy of the Will itself be mailed or served on the same heirs and beneficiaries.

By filing the original Will with the Court, it thereby becomes a public record and is available to be viewed by anyone interested in its contents. Thus, my practice is to send a copy of the Will to all of the interested parties along with the Notice of Pendency of Probate even though this is not statutorily required. And this is the usual method for revealing for the first time to the interested heirs and beneficiaries what the testator provided in his Last Will and Testament.

But since this process is so lacking in drama and mystery, the Hollywood screenwriters had to invent a convention for a formal “Reading of the Will”, and this myth continues to persist today. And I have to confess that I’m always a little disappointed that I’ve never had an opportunity to be part of such a dramatic vignette.

Next Segment: Don’t Let The Court Decide Who Will Receive Your Property.

The Reading of the Will: Discarding the Myths of Probate. By: M. Geoffrey G. Jones

Our Managing Partner, Geoff Jones, has taken the time to write about our practice and the myths associated with the topic of what happens to families when a loved one dies.

We historically hear a universal declaration by our clients they wish to “avoid probate” yet as Geoff explains, this fear is largely a product of fiction.

In this several part series, he explores the reality of the practice and lends comfort to the reader we have the family’s interest at heart.

Part 1 : Introduction, Jarndyce v.Jarndyce.

Charles Dickens 1812- 1870

In his novel, Bleak House, Charles Dickens uses as a central plot device a probate case in the Chancery Court of Victorian England, known as Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. This probate case has been going on for generations and has reached the point of absurdity in its complexity, and the attorney fees of the lawyers involved in the case have essentially devoured the entire estate:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, over the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means.

The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.

The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless.

Tools of Justice

Unfortunately, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce is still representative of many of the myths about the process of the probate of estates that still exist in many lay peoples minds. For most people, the idea of probating an estate is a dark and mysterious process, understood only by lawyers, who drag the process out for years and years while they take excessive fees for representing greedy relatives fighting over the scraps of a deceased person’s property.

Notwithstanding Mr. Dickens’ use of probate as metaphor for the absurdity of the judicial system in Victorian England, for most people today, many of the myths surrounding probate have been created over the years by Hollywood screenwriters, in an attempt to add drama to a process which is typically devoid of any courtroom theatrics.

It’s time to remove the veil of mystery and secrecy that surrounds the probate process and discard the 10 most common myths that have developed over the past 200 years in the minds of most Americans about this relatively straightforward (if somewhat prosaic) legal procedure.

The next segment: The Reading of the Will