A simple will is likely best
- After a seven-column series about ways to avoid any assets ending up in your estate, I explain that a simple will is likely your best option unless you wish to disinherit a spouse or child, or have a blended family.
I just completed a seven-column series about setting up your affairs so that wealth doesn’t pass through your estate on death.
I had been challenged by a reader who had endured what must have been a horrendous legal battle over his father’s estate. He accused lawyers of becoming “estate chasers”, a play on “ambulance chasers” having been told that if a will gets contested estate lawyers make big money.
Indeed, fights over an estate can be incredibly expensive. If you structure things so that your wealth is either spent or given away before you die, and anything else passes directly to beneficiaries outside of your estate, there’s no estate to fight over.
After spending seven weeks pounding this drum, it’s important that I emphasize that having wealth pass through your estate and be distributed according to your will is likely the very best estate plan.
If you’re planning to disinherit a spouse or child, absolutely consult with a lawyer about using the mechanisms I’ve written about to remove their ability to attack your estate plan.
If you’ve got a blended family, consult with a lawyer about the incredibly complex issues arising from that (I have written a separate series on that issue – let me know if you have difficulty finding it).
But if those circumstances don’t apply to you, a typical will might be the very best estate plan.
Yes, probate will be required, but probate isn’t the boogieman many fear it to be.
Probate fees paid to the government are just shy of 1.4%, which works out to $14,000.00 per $1 million. And the legal bill for the estate grant (probate order) is likely $5-10,000.00.
That’s a small price to pay for:
- Avoiding the risk of running out of money which can happen if you give away advance inheritances. It’s impossible to predict the significant dollars that might be required to maximize your comfort and enjoyment of life as your health and mobility deteriorate.
- Maintaining complete control over your own wealth. Your children might meddle, but you maintain complete control if your assets remain solely in your name,
- Avoiding the expensive and complicated mechanism of a trust,
- Avoiding unintended consequences of beneficiary designations if they are not done properly. I’ve recently seen a lawsuit over that very issue.
- Not having to stay vigilant to ensure that new assets are dealt with according to a probate-avoidance plan, and
- Perhaps most importantly, the simplicity of your wishes set out in one document that can be easily modified or redone without having to muck around with changing anything else.
Death can be incredibly unpredictable.
But in circumstances where life has become intolerable, MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) gives us the ability to choose a dignified death, and the predictability of our death becomes certain.
Once we know when we’re going to die, we can transfer all of our wealth to our intended beneficiaries and be able to directly supervise the follow through of our estate plan. Wills and other mechanisms for the passage of wealth after death become meaningless.
