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A large share of the households I work with in Forest Hills, Rego Park, and Kew Gardens own something beyond their apartment or house here — a Florida condominium, a cabin in the Poconos, a rental unit somewhere they once lived. When a client tells me about a second property outside New York, I work through the same four steps in order, and I will lay them out here so readers can start on their own.
First, Confirm How Each Property Is Titled
Titling determines what has to pass through court, and a will has no effect on that. I ask to see the actual deed for the out-of-state property, the co-op stock certificate and proprietary lease for the apartment here, and any documents showing joint owners. Clients are frequently surprised by what the paperwork says. This is also where I explain estate planning for property in more than one state and why the will they signed years ago does not reach across a state line.
Second, Identify Where a Second Court Proceeding Would Open
Real estate answers to the law of the state where it sits. The Queens County Surrogate’s Court in Jamaica can grant an executor authority over an Austin Street co-op and the accounts here. It has no jurisdiction over a condominium in Broward County. Property there requires a separate proceeding in Florida, called an ancillary probate, with its own local counsel and its own timeline. Value is not the trigger; a modest bungalow creates the same procedure as an oceanfront house. A summer place in Montauk or Southampton, by contrast, is still New York property and stays within the New York courts.
Third, Rule Out the Shortcuts
Adding an adult child to the deed is the shortcut I most often talk clients out of. It is an immediate gift, it exposes the property to that child’s creditors, divorce, and lawsuits, it can disqualify a parent from Medicaid for years, and it usually forfeits the full step-up in cost basis, producing a capital gains bill larger than the probate it was meant to avoid.
Fourth, Choose and Actually Fund the Structure
That is why I advise clients with property in two states to look first at a properly funded revocable living trust. Both deeds are transferred into the trust during your lifetime, so neither state’s court has anything to move and your successor trustee steps in directly. The step that gets skipped is the funding. A trust whose deeds were never re-recorded accomplishes nothing, and that is where most of these plans quietly fail.
If your loved one left behind property in more than one state which needs to be transferred, contact us today for a free phone consultation.
Contributed by Roman Aminov, Esq, a Queens estate attorney in New York City.
Roman Aminov Estate Law firm of Queens
147-17 Union Tpke, Kew Gardens Hills, NY 11367, United States
P59P+93 Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, NY, USA
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