We are committed to treating every human being with respect and dignity. We are an ally of the LGBTQ community. You can come to your consultation at Richert Quarles P.A. confident that you can share any detail with us without judgment. I want to provide services to everyone who needs them (and most people do) including those in the LGBTQ community.

At Richert Quarles P.A. we want everyone to feel comfortable disclosing every detail of their life because that’s what is required to craft a proper estate plan. As Florida estate planning in and probate attorneys, we often need every detail of the human relationships. Currently, the birth sex or gender of the people involved doesn’t matter as much as it did before 2015. We don’t judge people, we are focused on achieving our client’s goals. To do that in our practice, everyone needs to know up front that they can share all of their family and financial details with us comfortably without fear of judgment.

A fair amount of time is spent in law school discussing how everyone deserves the right of access to the legal system. Our attorneys agree. We believe that everyone should have the same ability to protect their assets from creditors, unscrupulous family members or wasteful children. Prior to Obergfell v. Hodges in 2015 each state was within its rights to define marriage. Even if that meant ignoring a marriage lawfully entered into in another state.

There’s still a great deal of academic discussion to be had with respect to the 10thAmendment, the full faith and credit clause, and other constitutional provisions. But for now, the issue is settled.

This meant there needed to be a complex and layered approach, and extremely diligent and detailed attention to titling of assets so that the family members would benefit as if the state didn’t ignore an otherwise lawful marriage. Now if there’s a lawful marriage, the intestacy statutory distribution should apply in the absence of a will or trust. However, do you want to be the one to test that out?

We can create a plan, and help you properly title all of the assets so that they will pass outside of probate. This will ensure that your spouse will receive assets you leave behind when you pass away. There is also the added benefit of avoiding probate, and reducing the likelihood a creditor will pursue their claim against the estate.  Even though a will must be probated, it’s a minimum level of protection to make sure your assets go to your spouse, and are not intercepted by children or parents who are not sensitive to equality in the human experience.

We are sensitive to the needs of every human being, and want to make sure everyone who needs legal services can receive those services without fear of judgment (Unless of course we’re in litigation, because, well a judgment is the whole idea).

Feel free to call one of our Florida Probate and Estate planning attorneys. We’re here for you, and we look forward to serving you. Remember this is for informational purposes only, and estate planning is a complex area of the law in a lot of cases. We’ve got a few cases where we’re unraveling mistakes made by folks who tried to do it themselves- trust me, it’s less expensive to let us do it right the first time.