Attorney Thomas B. Burton, of Burton Law LLC, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin is joined by Attorney Matthew Underwood, of Underwood Legal, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin and together they answer a reader's question about estate planning and how to transfer a family farm after one brother passed away. Both brothers inherited the family farm, but the farm was never legally split before one of the brothers passed away. Now the surviving brother is seeking answers about how to transfer his deceased brother's half to himself. Attorneys Burton and Underwood discuss this question and present the reader with various options about how to accomplish his goals.
Transcript of Video: Brothers Inherit Family Farm and One Brother Passed Away How Do I Claim His Half?
Okay welcome back today on the program
I am joined again by attorney Matthew
Underwood of Madison Wisconsin and Matt
thanks for coming back on the program
yeah thanks for having me time it's
always great to do these shows
with you and it's lovely today to film
next to the Golden Gate Bridge I always
enjoy my trips here so lovely weather I
hope you're enjoying it Matt oh
absolutely it looks like the sun's going
down or coming up in a bit too and
yeah beautiful sky right before us so
now we never stop working filming these
videos so today's question has to do
with farmland and the writer asked the
following my brothers inherited our
family farm the property was never split
my brother left his half to me how do I
claim it yeah so this is a good question
and it comes up a lot especially being
in Wisconsin and you know some of these
family farms that we deal with they
might have been in the family for
generations some farms can be family
century farms so there's a lot of
history with a lot of these farms and in
you know continuing that legacy is a
goal for a lot of those Wisconsin
farmers so these situations can be a
little bit tricky especially when we're
dealing with multiple beneficiaries and
maybe those beneficiaries have different
wishes may be some beneficiaries one to
stay on the farm others would rather
have that farm sold and then take
proceeds so these can be tricky
situations where it's helpful to have
qualified estate planning attorney to
help out but in this question so we have
a situation where maybe mom and dad
passed away and left that farm to their
children and now one of those siblings
one of the children passed away and then
left that interest in the farm to
another sibling so I'm just for this
example let's say that there were four
and then mom and dad left the farm to
those four kids and one of those kids
passes away and leaves it to one of the
other siblings so what happens is on
that beneficiary will essentially step
into the shoes of that deceased owner so
if that sibling owns 25% now that's it
sibling who's inheriting it can step in
and now they own that 25% so in this
case if there's four kids one passes
away and one of those survivors inherits
that interest we're going to have two
beneficiaries with 25% and one
beneficiary with 50% so you know that's
not the end of the story that's just how
things will work in terms of estate
planning law but we really need to go
through a process to clean up title to
that farm so we can't just leave things
as they are we need to make sure that
that beneficiary's name goes on that
farm title and then whoever passed away
we need to remove their name from that
title so the process that we go through
it really depends on how that estate is
situated if the person who passed away
had a will or maybe they don't have any
sort of estate plan we might have to go
through probate court and during
probate is when we'll clean up title and
make sure that that new owner gets
full credit for their interest and if
there was a trust involved or maybe just
by the way the deed was set up there are
some survivorship rights there might be
different processes that we'd have to go
through depending on that how that
property was structured so without
knowing further it's hard to say what
the best and most efficient route is but
a good estate planning attorney will let
you know what your options are and then
help you find it the best path forward
that's sufficient and that will get
things done so Tom I would turn it
back over to you and just be interested
to hear your thoughts and you know being
in the Eau Claire area you must run into
these issues quite often dealing with
family farm situations yeah I think this
question there's not a lot of details so
you pinpointed exactly my question it'd
be if I could talk to
the client I would ask them how did you
receive this interest in the farm and by
how I mean what type of document so if
it was a deed can you show me a copy of
that deed if it was through a will let's
look at a copy of the will if it was
through a trust let's look at a copy of
the trust and then from there we can take
one of those pathways you mentioned and
find the most efficient way to get the
deceased person off the title and get it
into the hands of it sounds like the
other brother at this point so I think
whether you're working with Matt or with
me or another estate planning attorney if
you can help gather those documents and
bring them to us we can always take a
look and then I like to just lay out your
options and we find the best way to
accomplish your goals
so I guess that's what I would
ask for the same thing as you a little
additional information it's probably in
one of those documents and if you send
it to the office we can take a look and
get started on it with you yeah
absolutely I think when clients are
prepared and in are well organized that
makes our meetings with our clients that
much more efficient so yeah
absolutely gather any information that
you might think is important to this
situation bring it to the attorney's
office and then go through it and then
you'll get your answers absolutely well
thank you to the writer for the question
and thank you Matt for joining us
thank you Tom thank you everyone for
watching and we'll see you next time!
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