If you read the Florida Probate Rules , you won’t find any reference to the Coronavirus Pandemic. However, COVID is having a huge impact on probate cases in the state of Florida. As of the date of writing this article, August 27, 2020, there have been a 611,991 total COVID 19 cases in the State of Florida, resulting in 10,868 deaths. The hardest-hit metro areas by this new disease are Tampa, St. Petersburg, Miami, Orlando, and Jacksonville.
St. Peterburg Probate Attorney, Jason Kral, owner of FloridaAttorneyProbate.Com, said that the issue was two-fold: “First, there is an issue where more people are dying in due to COVID. Second, we are running into an issue where the courts have slowed down because in-person hearings are no longer allowed.” That impact is unfortunately slowing the process down because there is both a higher volume of potential cases and less available hearing time for the cases to be litigated. Mr. Kral is hopeful that cases will start moving more quickly as the country gets better at fighting the disease that has ravaged the State.
The Florida Probate Rules (floridaprobaterules.com) do have timelines during which certain actions need to be taken or rights could be waived, so Mr. Kral urged those who are negatively impacted by a coronavirus to talk to a local attorney in their area to determine what options they may have. There are also certain non-adversarial cases where attorneys do not need to appear in court and those cases are proceeding more efficiently.
The lawyers contacted for this article have also noted that it is not just the death toll that concerns them. Because hospitals are limiting the number of visitors that can enter their doors, important legal documents like a Designation of Health Care Surrogate should be filled out so that health care decisions can be made for loved ones who are unable to make those decisions for themselves. Another item that is often neglected is a simple will. If a will is not properly executed, the government will decide which loved ones inherit and their decisions are often at odds with the intent of the person who died. That is why Mr. Kral suggests that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” when it comes to legal issues. He suggesting that doing a little bit of estate planning work on the front end can save a lot of heartache down the road.
