Apropos of nothing in particular: MAKE A GODDAMNED WILL. If your estate isn't especially complicated you may be able to get away with writing it yourself, look up the rules for holographic wills in your state.
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You make a will for those left behind, not you. It’s a nightmare of red tape for executors when you don’t plan - and that’s just admins/financial, not even taking into account any custody issues.
Please, also have an "emergency binder", like this one https://thesavvysparrow.com/emergency-binder/. Make sure your person knows where it is. My mom has been in the ICU for two weeks, and if I couldn't get into her phone, we'd be screwed.
Hubs and I did this when we got married because he has a kid he wanted protected (from shitty mom) & I wanted him to be my medical proxy rather than my mom. Kiddo is 19 now & his mom has disappeared but I’m still glad we have everything in writing so he doesn’t have to do too much work when we die.
Yes! And make a 3-deep legal guardian list w/
life insurance to cover their care and future college. It doesn’t cost much, and keeps your kids out of the system if something unexpected happens.
Just did mine along with powers of attorney etc. No one needs extra difficulty just because I pass. Let me leave a chunk to SIL for her kids since she divorced the misogynist dumbass and is doing it alone
Thanks for the push, though I'm deeply irritated to find they're not legal here (it never occurred to me they wouldn't be)
My sister's been nagging me to do a will, & it just kinda keeps sitting on my infinite to-do list... Guess I'll have to bump it up now that I know my DIY plan won't do. 😭
Even with a will things can be fucked indefinitely. A will makes things so much easier.
My dad died in MARCH, and we are still waiting for various stuff to go through probate (apparently required even with will in this case). If the other money hadn't come through (bc will), we'd have been screwed.
My grandmother died in like February with a will and it’s still slowly working its way through probate or something. The executor is dragging their feet.
DIY wills can be good but they can also create headaches. One of the lawyers at the firm I work for recently encountered a case where a couple did a joint DIY will but didn’t think to explicitly include each other, one spouse (as is common) survived the other… and it’s a headache.
So, y’know, take your time with a DIY will and look at it from the perspective that the judge who reads your will and rules on what actually happens to your stuff after you die won’t be able to call you in to ask you what you *really* meant if it’s unclear.
Also! If you’re doing a DIY will it’s a good idea to get it notarized! Notaries aren’t very expensive and add a solid layer of legal verification that the will is legitimate.
And then tell your family* that you have a will and where the original is, plus give some folks you trust copies of it.
Anyway if I had a nickel for every time I've helped clean out the apartment of a narcissistic dude who died intestate, saddling a woman who was estranged from him with cleaning up his shit, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's infuriating it's happened twice. MAKE A WILL.
Please do it. When my SIL died unexpectedly without a will, her mother managed her estate as next of kin and the resulting violations of privacy that resulted as she went through every email, every document, every receipt were huge. Secrets laid bare in damaging and sad ways.
I feel for her mother so much. I had to do that for my dad’s late wife a year ago. She was incredibly secretive, but would write things like passwords and acct numbers on scraps of paper. (She was also a hoarder)
I had to go through every inch of her private life. Every email. Every text.
Even if you have a will, if you've had some life changes like ending a relationship, make sure it's up to date. My dad went through an ugly divorce, died not long after. His will was current but he had left his ex-wife's name on a lot of things (bank account) resulting in messiness for grieving me.
My buddy was dithering over how to divide up his rather sizable pension
There was a fiance he was maybe breaking up with
And a friend/companion of many years who seriously needed it
He didn't get it done
So it went to the estranged brother he'd absolutely meant to give nothing instead
That's a really good point, if you make no choices the state (in the US) gets a huge chunk of it and then whoever your legal next of kin is gets the rest. Especially for people who have chosen family that they care a great deal about, it's a good thing to think about.
This is incorrect, the state doesn't get shit unless you owed the govt money or died without heirs. Otherwise even if you die intestate your estate passes to your next of kin after creditors get their cut.
My parents not only made wills but they also made arrangements to get cremated. I remember my parents handing me, their eldest child, the cards with the cremation information, acting like they'd pulled off something sneaky. (Seriously, it was cute.) But I was glad they did it when they died.
My mom arranged her entire funeral with the funeral home and took out some sort of special life insurance that paid for it? Finding that info in her files was a relief. (We aren't planning on staying where we are or I'd set mine up now too).
A friend had a husband who died intestate and now half her house is owned by his kids including the ones from a prior marriage one of whom is in prison for child molestation. She can't do anything with her house without getting all of them involved.
I see this a lot at work. Also, if you co-own a business with someone who doesn't have a will and your business doesn't contemplate what happens if one of you dies, you might end up with a group of small children as your new partners.
We had this with my grandpa. He didn’t write one until he was 92 and while it was better than nothing, still was often contradictory (aka second wife got part of the house and would be allowed to live there indefinitely, but her social security check wasn’t enough to even turn on the heat on it)
Yeah, that kind of thing is why it can be a good idea to get a lawyer’s input. Even if you don’t think your situation is complicated, it can be more complicated than you assume! Lawyers are good at working in language to cover contingencies.
Real estate and other significant valuable property can make a lawyer a really good idea and worth the expense. It’s not necessary for everyone but, it’s worth giving the matter serious consideration.
Yeaaah. Lawyers help with getting things to make sense, but even so they’re not perfect guarantees of nothing going wrong. Particularly if circumstances have significantly changed since the will was last updated!
My Gma used a "legal will kit." It was legal and clear, but lots of bad decisions. All 3 boys listed as executors, which meant all 3 had to sign everything -- 2 from across the province.
Her friends witnessed it, so the kids had to track them down and get them to swear that they'd really signed it. When a lawyer witnesses it, they do an extra step with witness and stamp or something.
The stamp is a notary. A lot of lawyers are also notaries so they can do that without needing to call in another person, and the firm I work for also pays for the legal assistants to become notaries so that someone is always available to do it in-house. It adds legal verification to the signature.
I don’t know all the details about how and when notaries are helpful but here in the US, it’s mostly a “certified person witnesses the signature and verifies in writing that they did so and that it’s actually signed by the person claimed to have signed it”.
Is it also traceable? The one time I did it for work (yes, my coworkers told me they did all the tests before shipping the part), the notary had a log book, but does that vary with jurisdiction? What happens if the book is lost in a fire?
Accountant check MIL's will, accounts before she passed. She'd done pretty well, saved the income tax from the year the rules changed, and the year she gave son half the cottage, properly claimed income on the half she "sold" him.
Found a few unclear things, like who gets contents cottage.
How many think to do that? She had a good financial advisor. Her friends thought going through the advisor for all her investments was waste of money. Advisor saved us a lot in the long run!
Recent court case, 3 sisters, 1 close and helped, 2 not. Close one's name was on bank account. Old rules: Money in account goes to that one. Sisters successfully argued name was only on account to help with accounting. We also get share of it.
To add another voice to this:
YES. DO THIS.
My aunt died unexpectedly in August & ostensibly left everything to her sister, my mother, but no will. HOWEVER, my sister who is "helping" nearly cost my Mom untold $ worth of inheritance thru taxes & is trying to manipulate her way into aunt's new house
yep. spent the summer doing so much fucking paperwork bc my dad didn't fucking make a will. so much fucking hassle when all i wanted was to be able to grieve.
got mine done immediately. i only have the one real asset, it wasn't too complicated.
one of my great uncles refused to make a will because he was convinced he would die if he made a will some men are even worse at life than anyone imagines
This was my mother's twisted logic. I begged her & my stepdad to make wills; it was a 2nd marriage for both & failing to do so would mean either his children or hers would be left out in the end. But neither of them wanted to think about it.
They died within a month of each other. She passed first.
Not only did my grandparents and Dad have wills but my grandparents did the pre-need funeral thing so we only had to come up with flowers and pictures for the slideshow. Dad had the will but no funeral arrangements and that was a minor hassle.
In the US, if you have children & property I *highly* recommend setting up a Family Trust. If done properly & thoroughly, the pain & suffering you will spare your beneficiaries upon your passing is immeasurable. (No dealing w/probate!!) I give thanks to our parents for doing this every day.
We are on year 8 of a family war over inheritcance because our father in law, god love him, did not do this, and is a sci fi writer with a ton of profitable intellectual and actual property.
Agreed. And they’re better than Wells Fargo who mailed a confirmation of change of address to my ex, about whom I had a protective/restraining order for abuse. When I called them, they denied ever sending it; I had letter in hand.
I had it out with a credit union about this too. They claimed it was for security?? Mailing a letter with my new address to an address I just told them I no longer lived at??
BoA closed my credit card account when I asked for a name change, then reported it to the credit bureaus as 'closed at customer request', which hurts your rating
Because I missed a payment, they had jacked my interest rate to 24% & said it would never go down
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life insurance to cover their care and future college. It doesn’t cost much, and keeps your kids out of the system if something unexpected happens.
My sister's been nagging me to do a will, & it just kinda keeps sitting on my infinite to-do list... Guess I'll have to bump it up now that I know my DIY plan won't do. 😭
My dad died in MARCH, and we are still waiting for various stuff to go through probate (apparently required even with will in this case). If the other money hadn't come through (bc will), we'd have been screwed.
And then tell your family* that you have a will and where the original is, plus give some folks you trust copies of it.
I had to go through every inch of her private life. Every email. Every text.
There was a fiance he was maybe breaking up with
And a friend/companion of many years who seriously needed it
He didn't get it done
So it went to the estranged brother he'd absolutely meant to give nothing instead
Chilling thought, though.
And hers was so uncomplicated she could have done an online one. But once dead, it got complicated af.
Now begging dad to not put me through that.
Here's one:
https://missourilawyershelp.org/legal-topics/#probate
My Gma used a "legal will kit." It was legal and clear, but lots of bad decisions. All 3 boys listed as executors, which meant all 3 had to sign everything -- 2 from across the province.
(Usual note that varies by jurisdiction.)
Fun fact: Austrian foreign pension won't accept Notary for proof of life, but will accept the local bank. We could hire notary to visit, not bank.
Found a few unclear things, like who gets contents cottage.
YES. DO THIS.
My aunt died unexpectedly in August & ostensibly left everything to her sister, my mother, but no will. HOWEVER, my sister who is "helping" nearly cost my Mom untold $ worth of inheritance thru taxes & is trying to manipulate her way into aunt's new house
We did a will when bought a house together.
In the UK, my Union did reduced rate wills so we got a proper one, by a lawyer, for not too much.
got mine done immediately. i only have the one real asset, it wasn't too complicated.
They died within a month of each other. She passed first.
Currently watching from a distance a small family deal with a nightmare will and situation. Sigh.
My parents have a 3-ring binder in a fireproof safe with trust documents, list of bank accounts, financial advisor contact info, etc.
Those aren't part of the estate (check your state laws) & can be handled with a death certificate
Apologies to donkeys, who are in general rather nice
Because I missed a payment, they had jacked my interest rate to 24% & said it would never go down
Paid it off & will always warn people