Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...

Probate is a court-supervised process to evaluate the contents of an estate and distribute them to beneficiaries. It is not necessary for the person who has died to bequeath an estate for probate to ...

Definition of Formal Probate Formal probate is a court-supervised process where the validity of a deceased person's will is determined and their assets are distributed. It's often used when the ...

Probate is the legal process for distributing your property after you die. Many, or all, of the products featured on this page are from our advertising partners who compensate us when you take certain ...