Probate is the court-supervised legal process through which a person’s estate is administered and distributed after they have passed away.
There are a few functions of a probate proceeding:
It validates the deceased person’s Will, if they have one
It appoints a person responsible for administering the estate (called a personal representative, executor, or administrator)
It identifies and inventories the assets of an estate, and establishes and confirms valid debts, taxes due, and expenses of the decedent’s estate
It ultimately distributes the balance of the estate’s assets to the beneficiaries or heirs
When Is Probate Required?
Generally, probate is required when a person dies owning assets solely in their individual name, such as real property or bank and investment accounts, without a designated beneficiary or survivorship feature.
Probate is generally not required for assets that pass outside of the estate by operation of law. This includes jointly held property with rights of survivorship, assets funded during lifetime to a revocable trust, life insurance proceeds and retirement accounts with a beneficiary designation on file, and payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts.
Small Estate Procedures
Many states offer streamlined versions of probate that require little or no court involvement. If the “probate” estate falls below a certain dollar value and/or excludes real property, assets can be collected and distributed through a small estate affidavit or summary administration process instead of formal probate.
$10K-$150K+
Typical small-estate dollar thresholds vary widely by state. Some also exclude assets like homestead property or vehicles from the calculation.
Independent vs. Supervised Administration
Some states bifurcate their formal probate procedures into two forms of administration.
Independent Administration
The personal representative manages and distributes assets with minimal court oversight, selling property, paying claims, and making distributions without prior court approval. Less expensive and faster; more common where available.
Supervised Administration
The personal representative must obtain court approval for most significant actions, selling real property, paying claims, issuing final distributions. More protective, but more time-consuming and expensive.
Some states only provide for supervised administration, while others require it for estates with disputes among beneficiaries, concerns about the representative’s fitness to serve, or when the will or state law requires it.
How Can I Avoid Probate?
The most common approach to avoiding probate entirely is to create a revocable trust and fully fund it with all of the assets that would otherwise pass through your probate estate, for example, bank accounts, investment accounts, and real property. IRA and life insurance accounts avoid probate separately, through beneficiary designations.
Is a Revocable Trust the Only Way to Avoid Probate?
No. You may also be able to avoid probate in a Will-based plan by naming beneficiaries on accounts like retirement plans or life insurance, or by titling property jointly with someone else.
However, there are two things to keep in mind:
01
Any account with a beneficiary designation, or any asset you retitle during your lifetime, will pass outside your Will. It won’t follow the instructions in your Will.
02
Adding a joint owner can cause that asset to lose its “step-up in basis” at your death, a tax benefit it would otherwise get if it stayed solely in your name or your revocable trust.
Because of these tradeoffs, if you want to avoid probate with a Will-based plan using beneficiary designations or joint ownership, we strongly recommend talking to an attorney first to make sure it fits your situation.
What Makes a State’s Probate Process More Cumbersome?
A state’s probate process is considered more burdensome when it has:
High court filing fees
Attorney and executor fees set by a fixed schedule or the estate’s total value, rather than actual time spent
Long waiting periods for creditors to make claims, delaying distributions
Complex or unclear local court rules and procedures
A generally slow administration process
Heavy court oversight of each step
Together, these factors can make probate slower and more expensive, meaning your beneficiaries wait longer to receive their inheritance, and fees can eat into a larger share of what’s ultimately passed on to them.
The Great Wealth Transfer is usually framed as a story about scale. Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion will transfer through 2048, including approximately $105 trillion passing to heirs and $18 trillion going to charitable organizations. Nearly $100 trillion is expected to originate with Baby Boomers and older generations.
But the amount of money changing hands is only part of the story.
The next generation is unlikely to invest all of that wealth in the same way as the generation transferring it. Younger investors are showing greater interest in private equity, venture capital, private credit, cryptocurrency, direct real estate, commodities, collectibles, and other assets outside the traditional mix of publicly traded stocks and bonds.
As reported by The Daily Upside, 88% of Gen Z and millennial investors surveyed by Bank of America expect to increase their allocations to alternatives in the coming years. Younger respondents already allocate approximately 15% of their portfolios to alternatives, and 58% report owning digital assets.
These findings reflect a specific high-net-worth population, not Gen Z and millennials broadly. Bank of America’s 2026 Study of Wealthy Americans surveyed 1,431 U.S. respondents who were at least 21 years old and had at least $3 million in investable assets, excluding their primary residence.
The shift is not hypothetical. In July 2026, Cerulli estimated that U.S. financial advisors already allocate approximately $2.2 trillion to less-than-fully-liquid private capital. Cerulli expects advisor-intermediated ownership of those investments to grow by another $2 trillion over the next five years.
As these trends converge, the Great Wealth Transfer will become more than a transfer of money. It will become a transfer of assets that may be harder to identify, value, access, sell, divide, and manage.
A transfer of investment philosophy
Traditional discussions about generational wealth often focus on asset retention.
Will the children continue working with their parents’ financial advisor? Will the assets remain at the same firm? Will the next generation maintain the portfolio that created and preserved the family’s wealth?
Those are important questions, but they can overlook a more fundamental change. Many younger investors are not simply inheriting their parents’ assets. They are bringing a different philosophy to how wealth should be invested.
Bank of America’s research found that 77% of ultra-high-net-worth respondents, defined as those with more than $25 million in investable assets, believe that private markets offer greater investment opportunities than public markets.
Some heirs will receive alternative assets directly, including family businesses, private-company interests, investment properties, mineral rights, art, or collectibles. Others will inherit portfolios of traditional investments and then redirect part of that wealth into alternatives.
Either path can change the estate-planning equation.
A plan built primarily around brokerage accounts, retirement assets, life insurance, and a family residence may not fully address a balance sheet that also includes private funds, multiple business entities, cryptocurrency wallets, illiquid real estate, or valuable physical assets.
Why alternatives create a different estate-planning challenge
Alternative investments are not inherently better or worse for an estate plan. They are simply different.
Many publicly traded investments have observable market prices, established custody systems, and active secondary markets. Alternative assets may depend on private agreements, specialized valuation methods, restricted transfer processes, physical possession, or unique forms of digital access.
FINRA warns that alternative and complex products can be difficult to understand, may provide less information to investors than publicly offered investments, and can have limited secondary markets. In some cases, an owner may be unable to sell an investment when desired or may only be able to sell at a meaningful loss.
Those characteristics have implications that extend well beyond portfolio construction.
The asset may be missing from the financial picture
The first challenge is often visibility.
Traditional investments are generally reflected on account statements from financial institutions. Alternative holdings may be distributed across LLCs, partnerships, private funds, online platforms, digital wallets, physical storage facilities, and separately maintained legal agreements.
A client may own a minority interest in a private company, cryptocurrency on multiple exchanges, a direct blockchain wallet, shares in a venture fund, a vacation property, mineral rights, or a valuable collection. Some of those assets may not appear on the advisor’s portfolio-management system or the client’s most recent estate-planning summary.
That creates a basic but serious problem: an estate plan cannot effectively address an asset that no one has identified.
For advisors, maintaining a reliable inventory of alternative holdings is not merely an administrative task. It is foundational to understanding the client’s complete financial and estate-planning picture.
The ownership structure may determine the transfer
Alternative assets are frequently owned through entities or governed by private agreements.
A private-company interest might be held individually, through an LLC or other entity, or in a trust. A family business may be subject to a shareholder agreement or buy-sell agreement. A private fund may restrict who can receive an interest or require the manager’s consent before ownership changes.
These agreements may contain rights of first refusal, eligibility requirements, valuation provisions, purchase options, or restrictions on transferring an interest to a beneficiary.
The IRS itself directs estate-tax examiners reviewing closely held business interests to examine governing entity documents, rights of first refusal, buy-sell agreements, ownership records, and the valuation methods applied to the interest.
A will or trust may state who should receive an asset, but the asset’s governing agreement can affect whether that transfer is permitted and what process must be followed.
That makes coordination critical. The client’s estate documents, entity agreements, ownership records, beneficiary designations, and stated intentions must tell a consistent story.
Valuation becomes more complicated
Publicly traded securities generally have an observable market value. Alternative assets may not.
The value of a private business, limited partnership interest, investment property, art collection, carried interest, or other specialized holding may depend on appraisals, financial statements, market comparisons, contractual rights, and professional judgment.
For federal estate-tax purposes, the IRS generally requires property to be reported at fair market value. It also expects supporting information such as appraisals and specifically identifies closely held businesses, partnership interests, jewelry, antiques, automobiles, collectibles, and art as assets that may require additional valuation work.
Valuation affects more than a potential estate-tax calculation. It can influence insurance planning, charitable strategies, asset sales, business succession, and how property is divided among heirs.
It can also create family tension.
One beneficiary might receive a private-business interest with a high estimated value but no clear path to liquidity. Another might receive publicly traded investments that can be accessed and diversified immediately. The assets may appear equal on paper while carrying very different levels of risk, control, income, and flexibility.
A thoughtful estate plan should account for those economic differences, not simply compare estimated dollar values.
Liquidity may not arrive when the family needs it
An estate can be wealthy on paper and still lack usable cash.
Private funds may have multiyear holding periods. Investment properties can take months to sell. Family businesses may produce income but have no active market. Some private investments may also involve future capital calls or other continuing obligations.
At the same time, an estate may need cash to pay debts, taxes, administrative expenses, property costs, professional fees, or distributions to beneficiaries.
FINRA notes that many alternative and complex investments have limited secondary trading and may not be sellable when an investor wants to exit.
Without adequate liquidity planning, a family may be forced to sell an asset at an unfavorable time, borrow against other property, or use liquid assets intended for another beneficiary.
The relevant question is therefore not only, “What is the estate worth?” It is also, “How much of that value will be available when the family actually needs it?”
Digital assets require both authority and access
Cryptocurrency and other digital assets introduce an especially modern planning challenge.
A traditional financial institution has procedures for identifying a deceased account owner and working with an authorized representative. Direct blockchain assets can operate differently. Control may depend entirely on possession of a private key.
ACTEC’s 2025 guidance distinguishes between cryptocurrency held through an exchange and cryptocurrency held directly on a blockchain. With direct holdings, loss of the private key can make the asset inaccessible, with no conventional password-recovery process or centralized help desk.
Legal authority is another component.
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act was developed to govern fiduciary access to digital property when an owner dies or becomes unable to manage it. The act extends traditional fiduciary authority to digital property, including virtual currency, while imposing additional requirements for access to certain electronic communications.
That means a digital-asset plan must address several questions:
What assets exist?
Where and how are they held?
Who has legal authority to manage them?
Where are access instructions stored?
How will the owner protect those instructions during life?
How will an authorized person gain access after death or incapacity?
A provision in a will or trust is not enough if the fiduciary cannot locate or access the asset. At the same time, casually sharing private keys can create serious security risks while the owner is alive.
The legal plan, custody approach, security process, and practical succession instructions must work together.
Equal treatment may not produce an equitable result
Alternative assets can also challenge the assumption that an estate should be divided by giving each beneficiary an identical percentage of every asset.
A brokerage account can usually be divided with relative ease. A family business, investment property, private-fund interest, or collection may not be divisible in the same way.
Family members may also want different things.
One child may want to operate the family business, while another wants liquidity. One beneficiary may feel an emotional connection to a family property, while another sees taxes, maintenance, and financial risk. One heir may understand cryptocurrency or private markets, while another may be uncomfortable taking responsibility for those assets.
Equal and equitable are not always synonymous.
Planning should consider who wants each asset, who is prepared to manage it, what obligations come with ownership, how other beneficiaries will be treated, and what process should apply when family members disagree.
Preparing heirs is as important as preparing assets
The increasing complexity of family portfolios arrives at a time when many wealthy families already question whether the next generation is prepared.
Among ultra-high-net-worth respondents in Bank of America’s study, 79% involve their advisors in estate-planning conversations with their heirs. Yet only 36% believe their heirs are very prepared to receive an inheritance.
The broader estate-planning foundation is also uneven. Bank of America found that only 46% of wealthy respondents had a will, living will or advance directive, and durable power of attorney. Although 55% had a trust, only 33% said they understood trusts well.
Alternative assets can make this preparedness gap more consequential.
An heir may inherit a concentrated private-company position without understanding the company’s governance or financial condition. A beneficiary may receive an interest in an illiquid fund with continuing capital obligations. A family member may become responsible for real estate with significant debt, taxes, or maintenance costs.
Preparing the assets is only half the work. Families must also prepare the people who will receive or manage them.
That preparation requires more than disclosing a future inheritance amount. It should help the next generation understand:
What the family owns
How the assets are structured
Why the family holds them
What risks and responsibilities accompany ownership
Who will have decision-making authority
Which professionals can provide guidance
What the family ultimately hopes its wealth will accomplish
Those conversations are more effective when they are intentional.
A Merrill Center for Family Wealth study of individuals from families with at least $50 million in assets found that 78% of recent family wealth discussions arose spontaneously, and 26% of those who participated later regretted the conversation. When families co-managed assets, 54% identified limited governance, including unclear roles and decision-making authority, as a major challenge.
Estate planning can create the structure those conversations often lack.
The advisor’s role is becoming more central
Financial advisors do not need to become attorneys, private-business appraisers, cryptocurrency custodians, art specialists, or real estate operators.
They do need to recognize when those capabilities are required.
The advisor often has the broadest view of the client’s portfolio, goals, family relationships, cash-flow needs, risk profile, and professional team. That perspective makes the advisor well positioned to identify gaps and coordinate the right specialists.
The advisor can help connect decisions that are often made separately:
The investment strategy
The ownership structure
The estate documents
The tax plan
The liquidity plan
The succession strategy
The family’s expectations
A sophisticated trust cannot solve for an asset that was never identified. A business valuation does not solve a liquidity shortage. A carefully selected investment is not fully planned for when no one knows who will manage it after the owner’s death or incapacity.
The advisor’s value is in helping turn those separate decisions into a coherent strategy.
A five-part framework for advisors
As alternative investments become a larger part of client portfolios, advisors can incorporate five practices into the estate-planning relationship.
1. Build a complete ownership map
Identify the client’s traditional and alternative holdings.
For every significant asset, document what it is, where it is held, who legally owns it, how it is titled, who currently manages it, and where the relevant agreements or access instructions can be found.
The goal is not merely a list of estimated values. It is a map of the client’s ownership and control.
2. Match each asset to its transfer path
Determine what governs the disposition of each asset.
That might be a will, trust, beneficiary designation, deed, operating agreement, partnership agreement, buy-sell agreement, transfer-on-death registration, or platform-specific process.
Any inconsistencies should prompt coordination with the client’s estate-planning attorney, tax professional, or other relevant specialist.
3. Stress-test liquidity and concentration
Evaluate how much of the estate could realistically be converted to cash, how quickly that could occur, and what costs or restrictions might apply.
Model potential taxes, debts, administrative expenses, capital obligations, property costs, and beneficiary distributions. Consider how the plan would function if markets were weak or a significant asset could not be sold on schedule.
4. Prepare heirs and fiduciaries
Help the client decide when and how to involve children, beneficiaries, trustees, executors, business successors, and other decision-makers.
The goal is not necessarily to reveal every financial detail immediately. The goal is to ensure that the people who will eventually inherit or manage the assets understand their future roles and know where to seek help.
5. Treat the estate plan as a living strategy
Alternative portfolios can change rapidly.
A new private investment, business transaction, property acquisition, cryptocurrency wallet, marriage, birth, relocation, or liquidity event can alter the client’s estate-planning needs.
Establish a regular review cadence and identify the events that should trigger an earlier conversation. Estate planning should evolve alongside the portfolio, not trail it by several years.
The Great Wealth Transfer will reward coordinated advice
The Great Wealth Transfer will not be a passive movement of assets from one generation to another.
It will also transfer investment philosophies, ownership responsibilities, family expectations, and portfolios that are likely to contain a broader variety of private, illiquid, physical, and digital assets.
The central challenge will not be choosing between traditional and alternative investments. It will be ensuring that every asset, regardless of form, is visible, properly owned, accessible, manageable, and aligned with the family’s intentions.
That work sits at the intersection of investment management, estate planning, tax strategy, liquidity planning, family governance, and financial education.
For advisors, this creates an opportunity to deepen relationships across generations. Firms that help families prepare both their assets and their heirs will be better positioned to preserve wealth, reduce conflict, and remain relevant as responsibility moves from one generation to the next.
The Great Wealth Transfer may help fuel a historic expansion in alternative investing.
It will also produce a Great Complexity Transfer. The advisors who recognize that early will be best equipped to guide families through it.
Turning complexity into a clearer picture
Technology can help advisors bring this growing complexity into view. Wealth.com integrates with more than 20 trusted platforms and enables clients to connect alternative assets such as cryptocurrency through Coinbase, private-company equity data through Carta, real estate information through Zillow, alternative investment data through Arch, and external financial accounts through Yodlee.
Wealth.com’s estate visualizations can then help advisors and clients understand what is owned, how it is owned, and how those assets may transfer across generations.
Uniform Law Commission and ACTEC digital-asset guidance.
Merrill Center for Family Wealth, family wealth conversation research.
This material is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, tax, or investment advice. Individuals should consult their own legal, tax, and financial professionals regarding their specific circumstances.
PHOENIX, July 29, 2026:Wealth.com today announced a strategic partnership with FMG Suite, the leading marketing technology platform for wealth management and insurance organizations. Under the partnership, Wealth.com will serve as the Exclusive Technology Founding Partner of FMG’s Institutional Intelligence program.
FMG’s network of more than 80,000 advisors and insurance professionals, as well as the enterprises that support them, will gain access to compliance-friendly estate and tax planning content. Resources will include emails, social media posts, blog articles, downloadable resources and educational marketing assets designed to help advisors engage clients around two of the fastest-growing areas of holistic financial planning.
The partnership will also introduce Wealth.com-powered estate and tax planning website tools, digital experiences and website templates for advisors. FMG’s website team can implement these assets on an advisor’s behalf, creating a turnkey solution that helps firms educate prospects, strengthen client relationships and support business growth.
As part of the partnership, Wealth.com will also develop Estate Snapshot, a website-ready tool powered by Ester®, its proprietary artificial intelligence. Prospects will be able to securely upload estate planning documents, which Estate Snapshot will analyze to generate a concise, one-page summary. This will help advisors prepare more effectively for prospect meetings while creating a new lead generation opportunity.
“Institutional Intelligence is designed to help advisors activate specialized expertise across every marketing channel,” said Susan Theder, chief marketing officer at FMG. “Wealth.com brings exceptional estate and tax planning expertise to the platform, giving advisors ready-to-use resources they can personalize, distribute and use to deepen client relationships.”
Estate and tax planning have become increasingly central to holistic financial advice, yet many advisors still struggle to consistently create timely, compliant educational content around these complex topics.
By combining Wealth.com’s planning expertise with FMG’s leading marketing platform, the partnership gives advisors professionally developed resources they can publish immediately or customize to match their firm’s brand. This makes it easier to educate clients, strengthen relationships and create more meaningful planning conversations.
“The advisors who consistently educate clients are the ones who build deeper relationships and create more opportunities for meaningful planning conversations,” said Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at Wealth.com. “FMG has long been the gold standard in advisor marketing, and by combining FMG’s platform with Wealth.com’s estate and tax planning expertise, we’re giving advisors ready-to-use resources that help them educate clients, engage the next generation and differentiate their firms with far less effort.”
The partnership is available immediately at no additional cost to FMG subscribers with access to its Content Library. Wealth.com and FMG will also demonstrate the new capabilities during LPL Focus, taking place Aug. 9–11, 2026.
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About Wealth.com
Wealth.com is the industry’s leading AI-powered estate and tax planning platform, empowering thousands of wealth management firms to modernize how planning guidance is delivered to clients. Purpose-built for financial institutions, Wealth.com is the only tech-led, end-to-end platform that enables firms to scale estate and tax planning with efficiency, consistency and measurable client impact.
Trusted by some of the largest names in finance, Wealth.com combines proprietary AI, enterprise-grade security and deep legal and tax expertise to support the full spectrum of client needs, from foundational estate plans to advanced estate and tax analysis and reporting. With Wealth.com Tax Planning, firms can deliver more integrated, proactive planning through a single platform.
Wealth.com has been widely recognized for innovation and leadership, earning Top Estate Planning Technology and Top Estate Planning Implementation at the 2025 WealthManagement.com Industry Awards, as well as the #1 estate planning market share in the 2025 Kitces AdvisorTech Study.
About FMG
FMG is the leading marketing and growth platform for financial advisors, insurance professionals and enterprises, empowering them to scale compliant, client-centered marketing that drives organic growth.
Trusted by more than 80,000 financial professionals reaching over 45 million U.S. investors, FMG is consistently ranked number one in market share and customer satisfaction in the T3 Software Survey Report and has been recognized by WealthManagement.com as Best Marketing Automation Platform.
An independent study found that enterprises using FMG achieved Net Promoter Scores nearly four times the industry average, along with improvements in lead conversion, client retention and time saved on marketing tasks. FMG is defining the future of organic growth for financial services firms. For more information, visit fmgsuite.com.
