Just south of
home.

Bellefontaine Neighbors is a city of about 10,400 residents, and a large share of them are at the age where the questions about wills, trusts, beneficiary deeds, durable powers of attorney, and the orderly transfer of a paid-off home become urgent rather than theoretical. The phone calls we get from this city skew accordingly. Many of them open with a recent doctor visit, a recent diagnosis, or the realization that the spouse who handled the paperwork is no longer able to.

Missouri’s beneficiary-deed statute — RSMo §461.025 — is one of the more useful planning tools for a working family whose largest asset is the house itself. A properly drafted beneficiary deed keeps the property out of probate and transfers it to named beneficiaries on death. Many Bellefontaine Neighbors estate calls end with a beneficiary deed plus a short will plus durable powers of attorney for finances and healthcare. That is the standard package for a North County retiree who owns one home and wants to keep things simple.

We do, of course, also handle the traffic, injury, and criminal-defense matters that come out of any city — the Lindbergh and Chambers corridors generate their share of rear-end collisions, careless-driving citations, and the occasional DWI — but the through-line for Bellefontaine Neighbors is the estate work, and the courthouse the city’s probate cases ultimately land in is the same St. Louis County Probate Division in Clayton we appear in regularly.

Opening questions for a Bellefontaine Neighbors estate call: whether the home is in one name or two, whether anyone has already started using a power of attorney, whether there are out-of-state children, and whether the family has been told a trust is required (it usually is not). English or Spanish · Hablamos español.

For most Bellefontaine Neighbors families, the right plan is the smallest one that works — a beneficiary deed, a short will, and the two powers of attorney. That is the package, not a trust.