by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Thanks to two local attorneys, the probate process recently became a little easier to understand.
Last week, attorneys Harris Bonnette and Kimberly Blankenship, on behalf of the National Business Institute, presented The Probate Process from Start to Finish in Florida. The eight-hour seminar was designed for attorneys with limited or no experience in probate practice. It was also open to accountants, trust officers and financial planners.
“When the National Business Institute asked me to speak, I told them I would be happy to,” said Bonnette, who previously served as counsel for the IRS and is a member of The Jacksonville Bar Association. “A lot of what I do with taxes goes hand-in-hand with probate law. As a team, I thought we put together a really good seminar. I know it’s boring to some people, but I love this stuff.”
In getting prepared to explain what he described as “a very complicated process,” Bonnette decided to take a practical approach.
“I really just tried to think about how I would explain something like this to my grandmother,” he said. “You have to cut through all of the legal aspects and really get to the nuts and bolts if you want anyone to be able to follow what you’re talking about. That was one of my biggest challenges. Even professionals like it when you speak to them in plain English.”
Bonnette documented the time that went into preparing for the seminar. It took nearly 20 hours before he felt comfortable enough to speak.
“A lot of that time was spent drafting materials and really refreshing my own memory,” he said. “I was nervous when I first got up there, but when you’re talking about something you love, you get comfortable pretty quickly.”
Bonnette said the seminar’s primary goal was to steer professionals away from some of the common pitfalls associated with the probate process.
“Law is very broad now and it’s hard to be educated in all of the different areas. A lot of the time nowadays, people are not discovering all of the assets or beneficiaries,” he said. “Missing deadlines or not having a personal representative pay expenses that he is supposed to is very common, too. It is also important to follow timelines, appropriately.”
Bonnette also said when someone dies and they leave a large estate, people are very likely to come out of the woodwork looking for a payoff.
“It always shocks me when I open an estate and someone that I’ve never heard of, or that the family has never heard of, wants to contest the will,” he said. “It’s a real mess and I’ve seen some pretty big disputes come out of it.”
Following the death of a loved one, Bonnette said that families usually come to him with “a lot of questions when emotions are running high.”
“Following those emotions, there is usually a period of anxiousness,” he said. “People usually want it to be over with overnight and it doesn’t work that way. It’s not a quick process. My job is to shepherd them through it as best I can and it’s not easy. You really need to know what you’re doing and you can’t take it lightly.”
Now that the seminar is finished, Bonnette expects to get plenty of feedback.
“We finished not too long ago but I’m awaiting the evaluations,” he said. “Even during the breaks at the seminar, people were coming up to me saying things like, ‘That same thing happened to me,’ or ‘I’ve got this problem, can you help me?’ I’m definitely looking forward to more. Anyone who attended and has more questions is more than welcome to contact me. I hope they do.”