Jamie Sahagian Florida | Why So Many Florida Estates Get Stuck in Probate
Probate doesn't usually stall because a will is contested. Most of the time, it stalls because paperwork is missing, mismatched, or filed in the wrong order. Jamie Sahagian of Riviera Beach has watched that play out from the inside, as a paralegal handling estate administration for a Palm Beach County firm. That distinction matters more than people expect. A contested will makes headlines. A checklist that's one document short doesn't, but it's the more common reason a straightforward estate takes eight months instead of three. The Bottleneck Is Rarely the Law Florida's probate process is well defined on paper. What trips up families is the sequence: documents have to be gathered, checklists completed, and proposed orders drafted before a judge ever weighs in on the substance of a case. Sahagian's work centered on that sequence. Tracking deadlines across a full caseload, preparing the checklists courts expect, and drafting cover letters for proposed orders were...
