What Happens When Estate Plan Documents Cannot Be Found?

It is not uncommon for an individual to have a will or trust as part of his or her estate plan. In fact, a person could have both a will and a trust to make it easier to distribute assets or minimize estate taxes owed. However, it may be harder to abide by the terms of an estate plan if will or trust documents are lost or destroyed.

What Happens If a Trust Document Isn’t Located?

If a trust document cannot be located, it may be necessary to resolve the matter in court. Anyone who has seen the terms of the trust will likely be given an opportunity to provide testimony to the court as to what they are. The trustee will also likely have to testify or provide other evidence that establishes what the trust was supposed to do and who it was supposed to benefit.

Was the Trust Properly Funded?

If a trust isn’t properly funded, it typically doesn’t matter whether or not it can be found or not. This is because the document is null and void upon the death of its creator. Of course, there could be an exception if an individual included a pour-over will as part of an estate plan.

The pour-over will would allow assets to be transferred from a deceased person’s estate into a trust. In such a scenario, the will would have to be probated, which means that a court hearing would have to take place even if the whereabouts of the trust were known.

Legal Assistance Could Be Available

An estate planning attorney in Las Vegas could be able to help a person determine what was in a trust or other plan document. This may be done by interviewing beneficiaries or examining bank or other records that could provide clues as to a trust’s structure.

The Benefits of Using a Professional Executor or Trustee

As part of an estate plan, you are allowed to appoint a person or entity to serve as an executor or trustee. In many cases, a trusted family member or friend is called upon to fulfill this role. However, that person may not want to do so or may not be qualified to do so. Therefore, it may be best to hire a professional who can oversee an estate or help whoever else was appointed to do so.

Feel Free to Appoint a Professional to Serve Alongside Another Person

In some cases, it makes sense to appoint a professional to the role of trustee or executor alongside your friend, adult child or spouse. This may be true if you have a large net worth that could be difficult for a single person to manage on his or her own. It may also be worthwhile to appoint multiple trustees if you have more than one trust.

Professionals Will Act in a Fiduciary Capacity

Perhaps one of the best reasons to hire a bank or financial institution to act as an executor or trustee is because it will act in a fiduciary role. This means that it has to act in your best interest or the best interest of surviving beneficiaries. Ultimately, there is less risk of a sibling, child or anyone else being denied an inheritance for no good reason.

Choose Whoever You Trust to Carry Out Your Wishes

Ideally, you will choose whoever is best suited to oversee your estate whether it’s a person or an entity. A probate attorney in Las Vegas can generally help whoever is appointed to represent your estate to ensure that it is settled properly and in a timely manner.

Why You Should Avoid Handwritten Wills or Trusts

The goal of creating an estate plan is to ensure that your wishes are carried out after your death. If you make a trust, it could be structured so that your wishes are respected in the event that you become incapacitated. While wills and trusts can be structured in almost any way that you’d like, it is important that they are typed instead of handwritten.

Handwritten Estate Plan Documents May Be Invalidated

The best reason to type out estate plan documents is that handwritten documents could be declared invalid by a court. This is because there is no guarantee that words or phrases weren’t erased or crossed out by someone other than yourself. For instance, a person could erase the name of a beneficiary and replace it with their own. If a document were written in pen, words could be crossed out and replaced with new text without your knowledge or consent.

Your Handwriting May Not Be Legible

There is a good chance that your handwriting isn’t legible enough to be understood by a probate court. If there is any doubt at all about your intentions, there could be a significant delay in distributing assets to heirs. There is also the potential that a family member or other interested party could try to challenge the document because a word or phrase is hard to read. Ultimately, you can make life easier on your executor and surviving family members by simply typing plan documents.

You Can Get Help Typing Documents

An estate planning lawyer in Las Vegas may be able to type a will or trust for you. He or she may also be able to recommend someone who offers professional typing services for an affordable fee. Finally, friends or family members could be willing to help you finalize your estate plan and maximize the chances of it being put into place.

How to Ensure That Your Trust Is Funded Properly

Creating a trust can be a great way of ensuring that your kids or pets are taken care of after you pass on. It can also be a great way to provide money to charitable organizations or otherwise manage your estate while you are alive. However, it is important that you actually fund the trust to ensure that it takes effect when you want or need it to.

Creating a Pour-Over Will Is an Easy Way to Fund a Trust

One way to fund a trust is to create a pour-over will at some point during your life. A pour-over will is essentially a will that instructs the executor to put everything into a trust that was created at some point in the past. The use of such a will can be ideal for those who aren’t sure what to do with certain items or acquire property after the trust was created.

Assets Should Be Titled in Its Name

If a house is supposed to be in a trust, the title needs to be in the trust’s name. The same is true of a vehicle or anything else that comes with a title or a similar type of designation. Generally speaking, you can designate a trust as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. This means that when you die, the death benefit will typically just go into the trust where it will be distributed per your instructions.

Review Your Trust With an Attorney

It is generally in your best interest to work with a trust administration lawyer in Las Vegas to ensure that the trust is created properly. An attorney may also be able to help surviving relatives figure out what they need to do if a trust was not created properly. In some cases, this may mean going through probate as assets will likely be left in the estate.

The Consequences of Failing to Update Your Will

If you were to succumb to old age, injury or illness tomorrow, the most current version of your will would be given to a probate judge. Assuming that the will is valid, it is what the judge would use to determine how assets should be distributed. It would also be used to determine who should look after a child assuming that a guardian was named in the document.

Failing to Update Your Will Could Leave a Child With Nothing

Let’s say that you wrote your will after the birth of your first child and declared that everything that you own goes to that person. Let’s also say that you have another child in the future who is not named in the will. By failing to update your will, he or she could be entitled to nothing or to only a fraction of what you would have wanted a son or daughter to have.

A Lengthy Legal Battle Could Result

Your spouse, children or other interested parties could all try to claim that they are entitled to a share of your estate. Without clear instructions, a judge may have no choice but to make rulings regarding those claims, and those rulings may or may align with your actual wishes. Furthermore, relationships between family members could become strained as the legal battle progresses.

Make Time to Review Your Estate Plan

It is generally a good idea to review an estate plan after a child is born, after a divorce or after any other significant life event. A probate attorney in Las Vegas may be able to help you go over your plan and make any necessary adjustments. An attorney can also be helpful in keeping the probate process on track after you pass.