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.

Deciding How to Allocate Assets Among Your Children

If you own anything at all, you may have had thoughts about who should inherit those assets when you die. It is important to recognize that you can divide your estate however you wish even if your children may object. Let’s look at some ways to structure an estate plan that accurately reflects your final wishes and how to communicate those wishes ahead of time.

Divide Your Estate Through the Use of a Trust

Assets in a trust can be distributed in any manner that you would like. Therefore, you can choose to divide your estate equally among your children or choose to leave everything to just one child. In the trust document itself, you can write a paragraph or two explaining why one child got a majority stake in the family business while another got an antique painting or money in a bank account.

Beneficiary Designations Can Be Helpful

A beneficiary designation allows an asset to be passed on to a beneficiary as soon as the current owner passes on. It is important to note that this designation is considered more important that any language contained in a will. Therefore, it is important to update them as life events unfold. In most cases, only the beneficiary knows about the transfer, so it is unlikely that anyone will challenge it.

Have a Conversation With Your Kids Ahead of Time

While you are under no obligation to tell your children why you allocated your assets like you did, it is a good idea to do so. This may help to prevent fights between children or prevent your children from resenting you after you pass. An estate planning attorney in Las Vegas may be able to participate in this conversation or have private conversations with adult children on your behalf.

Choosing Guardians in an Estate Plan

Estate planning involved decisions that are about more than just what will you do with your money and property. If you have minor children, your estate plan will also need to include provisions about what will be done with your children if you are not here and how they will be raised.

Have the Conversation First

Before listing someone as the guardian for your children in your estate plan, make sure that you speak with them first to make sure that they are willing to serve in that role. The worst possible thing is for a guardian to be needed, but the person named does not want to fulfill the responsibilities. Not only should you verify that they want to be the guardian, but you should also discuss specific plans for raising the children. Things should never be a surprise to those who will likely already be making contingency plans quickly.

Put It in Writing

The estate plan should spell out any conditions or wishes that you have for how you want your children to be raised. For example, you may want them raised according to a certain religious faith. However, if it is not in your estate plan, the conditions will not endure if you are no longer here. Your estate plan is the way that you make your desires known when you are not here to put them into practice.

Choose the Best Guardian

Many people will consider the age of the prospective guardian and may hesitate to choose them if they are older. This includes the child’s grandparents. However, families should plan for today as opposed to the possibility of what may happen if the prospective guardian can provide for the most continuity for the children. In other words, families should not overthink the decision of who to name at the guardian. An estate planning lawyer in Las Vegas can advise you how to do this effectively.