In 1970, my pastor’s grandmother died. She lived in a modest house — a shack, he says — in Massachusetts. The house was worth about $20,000. In 1970, the median price of a home in the United States was $23,000. In the Northeast, it was a little under $26,000. Today, it’s $164,000 nationally, and about the same in New England. That’s what inflation and government-guaranteed mortgages have done — but mostly inflation. She died without leaving a will. It took twenty years to get her estate through the probate court. The assets were divided three ways. My pastor received one-third. … Continue reading Probate Lawyers Love a Corpse