What Happens to Matthew Perry's Estate, Including His Friends Residuals?
November 9, 2023 – Media MentionLaura Zwicker, Private Client Services Group chair, was featured in People and discussed how Matthew Perry's estate could be handled in terms of distributing his residual earnings and assets after the late actor's death.
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Both wills and trusts "provide direction as to who's in control of your assets, and then who gets to benefit from your assets when you die," says Zwicker.
The big difference between the two is if you have a will, a court will be involved, and "there'll be a court supervised probate proceeding in which your will will be submitted to the court and will become a matter of public record. And then there'll be an inventory of all of your assets that will be filed with the court, and that will also become a matter of public record," she says. "So clearly anyone who is thinking does not pass their assets through a will because everything becomes public."
"Most people who are well advised would have a will and a trust because the trust only operates on assets that you've put inside the trust," says Zwicker. "So you can think of the trust as a box with rules. You put your stuff in the box and the rules govern. If you've left something out of the box, we need our will."