Check your state... not all states require probate... estate size matters...
Also, some you can put language in your will to minimize probate activity... trust etc. that are being recommended are not necessary....
When my BIL died, sister did almost nothing with the courts... did all necessary things with death certificate and letters testamentary... I do not think she had a lawyer, just filed with the court and that was it... he did not have a will... she was his wife and no kids...
When your spouse dies, many states stipulate that, by default, all property passes to the surviving spouse. Therefore, it would likely be magnitudes far easier to probate an estate without a will if the deceased is your spouse. However....some states may not automatically leave everything to the surviving spouse if there is no will. In that case, you would technically have to probate whatever legally would go to other surviving relatives.
Also, even if you say certain things in your will - by law, if you have property/an account titled in the name of the deceased without explicit "JTWROS/payable on death/revocable living trust" wording on the title of the asset or account, then the ONLY way to legally remove the decedent's name off of an asset and retitle it in the name of a surviving non-spouse is through the probate process.
So even if you say in your will "I hereby leave all of my belongings to my neighbor", the neighbor cannot do anything to/with the assets until they take the decedent's name off of the account and put their name on it.
For example: my grandparents owned their house, with both grandparents on the title. Grandpa passed on. Grandma didn't do anything with the house. Several years passed. Thankfully, I finally got through to my grandmother to finally get some basic estate planning documents (they didn't even have a will!). So she retitled their house to be in her revocable living trust.
The big gotcha that we (her heirs) avoided: had grandma died without retitling her house in her revocable living trust, FIRST we would have had to probate the house to remove grandpa's name off of the title. THEN, after that was all done, THEN we would have had to go through the entire probate process AGAIN to remove grandma's name off of the title. A many month process with various steps (and significant expense!) compared to just 1 step while she was living.
Oh, sorry, forgot about some more fun: after someone dies and assets have to go through the probate process, there's a chance you will have to have an entire set of retitling every account/asset for the probate process, just to handle the assets during probate (i.e. if there are mutual funds or stocks that are paying dividends/interest/cap gains, or if a checking account is needed to pay utilities or real estate taxes for real estate, etc.). Not the end of the world....but yet another hassle that might have to be dealt with, either by surviving heirs and/or the lawyer (perhaps at $150/hr)
And if you've never dealt with various financial companies in trying to get help in figuring out just how you are to title various accounts for an estate - you will soon find out just how frustrating it can be to be tossed around by people who can't answer your questions, and then be told information by people who are supposed to know...but then find out later on that they didn't really tell you everything, nor did they quite know everything.
