Arizona Probate Costs Loved Ones Time, Money, & Stress

Let me tell you about a family I'll call the Johnsons.  Tom Johnson worked hard his entire life. He owned a home in Scottsdale, had a brokerage account, a savings account, and a modest IRA. He always meant to set up a trust. He just never got around to it.

Tom died unexpectedly at 71. No trust. No will. Just a house, some accounts, and a grieving family that had no idea what was coming next.  What came next was probate.

Here's what the Johnson family experienced — and what your family will experience if you die without a revocable living trust.

First: Everything stops.

The day Tom died, his family lost access to nearly everything he owned. His bank accounts were frozen. His brokerage account was inaccessible. His home couldn't be sold, transferred, or refinanced. Nothing could move until the Superior Court said so.  His wife still had her own accounts, so she wasn't destitute — but she was locked out of the assets they had built together for decades.

Second: The court process begins.

To get Tom's assets released, his family had to hire a probate attorney and open a probate case in Maricopa County Superior Court. That meant filing a petition, paying court filing fees, waiting for a hearing date, publishing a legal notice in a newspaper so any creditors could come forward, and then waiting for the court to appoint a personal representative to manage the estate.

This is not a fast process. A simple, uncontested Arizona probate typically takes five months minimum. If anything is contested — a disputed heir, an unhappy relative, an unexpected creditor — it can take years.

Third: The costs add up fast.

Probate isn't free. Attorney fees, court filing fees, publication costs, personal representative fees — by the time Tom's estate was closed, his family had spent thousands of dollars that should have gone to them. Our typical fee for a simple, uncontested Arizona probate is $5,000. That's money paid to the court system instead of to the people Tom loved.

Fourth: It became public record.

Everything about Tom's estate — every asset, every account, every dollar, every heir — became part of the public court record. Anyone could walk into the courthouse and look it up. His family's financial lives were on display for strangers, distant relatives, and anyone else curious enough to look.

Fifth: The family was under enormous stress for months.

While they were grieving, Tom's family was also managing court deadlines, collecting financial statements, dealing with attorneys, answering legal notices, and waiting. Month after month. For an estate that wasn't complicated at all — just a house and a few accounts. 

All of it was avoidable. Every bit of it.

Here's what would have happened if Tom had a revocable living trust.

His successor trustee — his wife or the trusted person he named — would have stepped in immediately. No court. No petition. No waiting. No publication. No public record.

His home would have transferred to his wife within days, not months. His accounts would have been accessible immediately. His family would have been able to focus entirely on grieving and healing — not on navigating the Arizona court system while doing it.

The trust would have cost Tom and his wife $4,497 if they had hired us to prepare their estate plan with a revocable living trust. The probate cost his family more than that — in attorney fees, court costs, and five months of waiting — plus the emotional toll that no dollar figure can capture.

The math is not close. The trust wins every time.

A KEYTLaw estate plan with a revocable living trust costs $3,497 for one person or $4,497 for a married couple. It includes 36 documents and services, a deed transferring your home into the trust, and complete protection for you and your family — for the rest of your life.

Probate costs your family time, money, privacy, and peace of mind — at the worst possible moment.

One of these is a gift to your family. The other is a burden you leave behind.

You get to choose which one it is.