Do we have to go through probate if my mother's Akron house is still in her name?

Yes, if the deed is in her name alone with no transfer-on-death designation and no trust. Someone is appointed by Summit County Probate Court, gathers assets, notifies heirs and creditors, and transfers the house by recorded court document.

My sibling and I inherited a house in Akron and disagree about selling. What can we do?

First establish how you own it: open estate, trust or joint deed. Then a buyout, a timetable or a fair division can be arranged through counsel. A dispute that cannot be settled is referred to a litigator.

Does an 80-year-old Akron homeowner need a living trust?

Usually a revocable living trust is the center of the plan: it holds the house, allows a chosen person to manage if he cannot, and passes the home without court. A transfer-on-death affidavit covers only the house.

Will Ohio Medicaid take my mother's house after a nursing home stay?

Not during her life. After death, Ohio's estate recovery program can claim against what she owned, including the house, beyond probate assets. Recovery waits while a spouse lives, and hardship exceptions exist. Review title first.

Akron, from where I sit

Stan Hywet Hall, Akron.
Photo: Brandon Bisel, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Saturday, early, we walk the Towpath Trail where it floats across Summit Lake. The boardwalk sits right on the water, and my younger daughter wants to know what happens if she drops her mitten, which is how I know she is thinking about dropping her mitten. There are herons. A man fishing nods and does not say a word, which is the correct amount of conversation for seven in the morning.

The Akron skyline seen from the Ohio & Erie Canalway — *Downtown Akron from the Ohio & Erie Canalway.*
Photo: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Then we drive up to Highland Square for coffee at Angel Falls on West Market Street. The girls get hot chocolate and a window seat and watch the neighborhood walk its dogs past. My wife photographs the storefronts. I read posters for things we will not get to.

Akron has more neighborhoods than I will pretend to know. I know the ones we drive through. Brick houses close together with a porch and three steps. The two-families with a door on each side. The blocks the rubber companies built for their workers a century ago, still standing, still full. Downtown, the city rebuilt Lock 3 on South Main Street with a stage and skating rinks, and the first cold week we are there with skates in the trunk.

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I’m Ruben J. Martinez, an estate planning attorney licensed in California and Ohio. I work with Akron families by video, by phone, and in person by appointment.

The houses

A woman carrying a laundry basket up the steps of a brick two-family house in Akron on a gray day — *Five years of Mom’s laundry, one flight up.*
Photos on this page are illustrations and do not show actual clients.

What an Akron family owns, more often than not, is a house. A brick two-story with a porch that a grandparent bought on a rubber-shop paycheck and paid off long ago. A double, with the family upstairs and a tenant below, or a cousin, or nobody for the last three years. A ranch in a 1950s neighborhood where every third house has passed to a child who grew up in it.

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The siblings sit on the steps of that house after the funeral and realize they own it together, or think they do. Three names and no plan, a brother in Columbus who wants to sell, and a sister who has done Mom’s laundry for five years and does not. I have seen that porch more than once.

The house is the plan. It is also, usually, not in a trust and not covered by a transfer-on-death designation. It is still titled to the person who died, or who is about to. In Ohio that means the Summit County Probate Court, whether the family meant it or not.

What Akron families ask me

Three adult siblings sitting on the front steps of a brick house with a folder on the porch rail — *The porch after the funeral.*

My mother died and her Akron house is still in her name. Do we have to go through probate?

If the deed is in her name alone with no transfer-on-death designation and no trust, yes. Someone asks the Summit County Probate Court to be appointed, gathers what she owned, notifies heirs and creditors, files an inventory, and transfers the house by a recorded court document. Ohio has a simpler release from administration for smaller estates. It is manageable, and slower and more public than a trust would have been. I would open the estate and carry the paperwork so the family does not have to.

My brother and I inherited the house. He wants to sell. I don’t. What now?

Co-owners who disagree end up in court or in a lawyer’s office, and the office is cheaper. The first question is how you own it: through an estate still open, through a trust, or already on a deed together. The second is what each of you actually needs, which is often different from what you said on the porch. I help families buy a sibling out, set a timetable, or divide fairly. If it cannot be done without a fight, I say so and refer the fight out.

Dad is 80, healthy, and owns his house outright. Does he need a trust?

He needs a plan, and for most Akron homeowners a revocable living trust is the center of it. The trust holds the house while he lives, lets a person he chooses step in if he cannot manage, and passes the house without court when he dies. If he wants something simpler, Ohio’s transfer-on-death affidavit covers the house alone, not his accounts, not his car, and not the day he needs help while still living. I would ask him what he wants, then draft to that.

Will Medicaid take the house if Mom goes into a nursing home?

Not during her life. After she dies, Ohio’s estate recovery program can claim against what she owned, including the house, and Ohio’s reach goes beyond probate assets. Recovery waits while a spouse is living and in a few other situations, and hardship can be argued. What matters is how the house is titled, when, and who has lived there. I would want the deed and her history before anyone signs a transfer or a listing.

How it works from here

A man of eighty with a mug of coffee standing on the porch of his brick house on a gray morning — *Eighty, healthy, and the house is his.*

Your first and second consultations are free, by video or phone. In the first I listen: who is in the family, what you own, what keeps you up. Then I tell you what I would do and what it costs before you commit.

For the second call, gather the deed, recent account statements, beneficiary forms for retirement accounts or life insurance, and whatever old will exists. I draft. You read at your own table and send questions. We fix them.

Signing is in person by appointment in Summit or Medina County, with a notary and two witnesses. Deeds and transfer-on-death affidavits are recorded with the county. First call to finished plan is usually a few weeks. Siblings in three states slow it down; a parent who has decided speeds it up.

When the family is home

A mother waiting at a kitchen table with a folder while her grown children watch the game in the next room — *The folder is ready. The game is on.*

The first Thanksgiving after the girls were born, I looked around a crowded table and realized every adult there assumed somebody else had the paperwork. The parents thought the children knew where things were kept. The children thought the parents had done the planning they always said they would. Nobody had. I write trusts for a living and the gap was at my own table.

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That is most tables. The parents want to say it; the folder is ready in the bedroom. The children do not want to hear it, because hearing it means picturing the chair empty, and the Browns are on. So the game plays and the folder stays put.

One sentence opens the conversation without turning it into a lecture: “Mom, if something happened, where would we even look?” Where is the deed. Which bank. Is there a will, and in which drawer. It is a question about help, and the answer is a gift the parents have wanted to give.

If someone in your family has just died

This week: find the will and any trust. Lock the house, forward the mail, keep the insurance and utilities paid. Order several certified death certificates. Do not move money, sell the car, or let anyone clear out the basement.

Within a month: find out whether the estate needs probate. Ohio has a release from administration for smaller estates and full administration for larger ones. A house with a transfer-on-death affidavit, or in a trust, may need no court.

Akron families file in Summit County Probate Court on South High Street downtown. I handle the filings and deadlines so the family can grieve without carrying the paperwork. One box at a time.

Around town

Luigi’s, downtown since 1949

Some Akron restaurants are places to eat. Luigi’s is a place to go. It has been downtown since 1949, and in 2025 Signal Akron named it best pizza. That is a long time for anything to stay in one place downtown.

A restaurant that has run for more than seventy-five years has fed four generations of the same families. It is the kind of place where couples who had a first date there bring their grandchildren, and where a family that has scattered for work ends up together again the night of a funeral.

Families make their real decisions at tables like that, more often than in a lawyer’s office. A plan is just the version that gets written down.

The Portage Lakes

The Portage Lakes have been Akron’s backyard water for a long time. They began as feeder reservoirs for the canal, and in 1949 the land around them became state park. Turkeyfoot Lake has the beach, and in 2025 the park opened a new visitor center.

A weekend at the Portage Lakes asks very little. A cooler, a cheap inflatable, an old boat if somebody’s uncle has one. Kids swim until their lips turn blue and claim they are not cold. Grown-ups sit at the edge of the water and, sometimes, finally talk.

Canal water, put to work for one purpose and later handed down for another, is not a bad picture of a family’s property. What a parent built for one reason often serves the next generation for a different one, as long as somebody wrote down how it should pass.

Talk with Ruben

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Ohio: (330) 960-6084. California: (909) 375-3377. Your first and second consultations are free, by video or phone; in person by appointment. Admitted in Ohio in 2026 and in California in 2020. Serving Medina County and Summit County, Ohio.

If you are on the Summit Lake boardwalk early some Saturday and a small girl is holding a mitten over the water, that is us.