Toledo Free Press: As an estate planning attorney, I (Mark) often deal with helping the clients of The Retirement Guys plan how to best pass their assets on to their loved ones when they pass away. This is a very serious matter if you think about it. Folks have worked hard all their lives to provide the best lives they can to their family members. They have sweated, sacrificed and gone without to make a better life. Think back on how you sacrificed.

The first thing everyone should consider is creating a will. This document decides where all your stuff goes when you die. How does it do this? By a process called probate. Many have heard the expression, “avoid probate,” or “probate is bad.” Is it really? Let’s take a moment to examine this and see if we can better understand this evil thing called probate. What is probate? My definition of probate is that it is a court-supervised process to get assets that are titled in your name to where you want them to go.