Please help me anticipate how a meeting with our lawyer is going to go. My spouse and I are both having wills drawn up. She is especially worried because her brother in law recently died without a will, leaving big messes for her sister to deal with. One of the problems was that he owned several expensive things, and her name wasn’t on any of the deeds or titles. Now my spouse wants her name on things like the deed to the house (which I owned long before we met) and the title to my car.
The trouble is, if her name is on the title to my car, I can’t trade it in on a replacement without involving her in the process, and she is absolute hell to deal with in such things — raising issues, stalling, changing strategy, that sort of problem. In fact, 2 1/2 years ago, she wanted to update HER car (which is 13 years old now), and I took money out of long term savings to help her, but she is still throwing up roadblocks preventing buying her a car. That project seems hopelessly stuck.
Also, I don’t know exactly what it would mean to “add her name to the title”. Would I have to sell the car to us? Can a car title have two people on it? The purpose is streamlining the sale of my car in the event of my death (she says she’s unable to drive it anyway).
I don’t want to be faced with unfamiliar options and spend lawyer time fighting about them. What should I be anticipating?
Note, all legal advice per se is going to come from the lawyer. I need strategy advice to plan for the meeting, is all.
I owned two cars with my ex-wife when we got divorced. The registration and pink slip had an OR between our names, not an AND. When we later sold respective cars, it wasn’t a problem. It only needed one of us.
A car title can have multiple people on it. It should just be an administrative change where you contact your state’s motor vehicle department and tell them to add an additional person.
If there are two people on the title of the car when it is being sold, typically one of the people can pre-sign the title and then the other person can sell it by themselves. You don’t have to have both people sign it at the same time. She can sign the title at home and then you can complete the process at the dealer by yourself.
States May differ on this but in my state I can add someone as a Transfer On Death (TOD) to my vehicle’s title. They don’t have any control over the car until I die and they show up with a death certificate, then the title transfers to them without having to go through probate or any estate process. I put my oldest grandchild on my Suburu title, maybe she can use it to learn to drive in 10 years.
If you own the house, what do you want to happen to it if you die before your spouse? Or after your spouse? Do you have other relatives (children?) you would want some/all of the house to pass to? What if you get divorced? Those are the kinds of questions that need to be answered before figuring out what to do with the deed.
I want her to be able to keep living here (if she wants). If I die first she gets everything.
There’s an alarm bell that we’re both prepared to discuss, though. If she dies, even though her name’s not on the deed, does she have a marital half-interest in the house? She’s leaving everything to her children and grandchildren, not to me, and she doesn’t have much money so I don’t mind about that. But I don’t want to wake up as a widower and discover that her kids are now half owners of my house, and I have to get their permission to stay here, or buy them out, or some such. I really don’t know about this one. However, we’ve already discussed this between us and agree we don’t want that outcome and will discuss with the lawyer.
Under these circumstances the lawyer is doubtlessly going to talk to you about a revocable trust. There are other ways to accomplish your goals, such as granting you a life estate in the home, but a trust is probably cleaner. I’m usually annoyed when estate planning attorneys talk about trusts in situations that don’t call for them (the attorneys make more money for drafting a trust instead of a simple will), but in this situation, it would seem to make a lot of sense.
So it sounds like you have no heirs other than your wife. If she predeceases you, what do you want to happen to the house when you die? Go to her kids & grandkids? What if you change your mind after she dies and want to leave all/part of it so someone else (like a second wife)?
Now of course she needs to do the same thing with her vehicle, add you as a TOD. It’s only fair. Offer to do the keyboarding to the MVA and to pay the $20 to preclude dilly dallying as you say she is wont.
The answer to every “change your mind later” question is don’t go giving people ownership rights ahead of time. Like putting spouses or kids on deeds or accounts as co-owners.
Instead, put your current plan in your will or trust or TOD/POD designations. If your plans later change, change the will or trust or POD/TOD. As long as you’re alive and competent, these things can be revised as often as you want. The initial effort and cost to set this stuff up is large compared to the rather trivial effort and cost to update it when plans or circumstances change.
Your plans should include contingencies such as what if some of your beneficiaries die before you do. They should not include contingencies like “What if I decide later that I hate my brother.” Even if the relationship is already on thin ice.
I figure it should be sold and the proceeds added to my estate. From my estate I’m specifying a certain sum to be distributed among her descendants, then the rest (meaning around 70% to 90%) given to a particular charity.
Mmmm. Yeah. Not likely. But there’s no need to transfer it faster than the probate process would. And she wants everything to go to her descendants, anyway, not me. No, it’s not really fair, but there’s wouldn’t be much in her estate anyway (unless it will include half the house as I wondered about above).
Yes, this. This is advice to live by. Or die by I guess. But, absolutely, good advice, thanks!
I’d say the most important thing to do to plan for the meeting is make sure you and your spouse are on the same page with goals, and what you both want to happen when one of you dies and then when the other dies. You don’t want to be hashing that out in front of the (expensive) lawyer, and it will undoubtedly lead to hurt feelings if one of you realizes the other went into the meeting with their own agenda.
Yes this is definitely it. We have different goals, but we understand how. I don’t need her assets so it’s OK with me.
Exactly. This is the thing I’m urgently trying to avoid. What’s scary is that I don’t know much about this whole process, so for example I just heard her say she wants her name on things, and now I’m trying to figure it out quickly. I hope TOD is an option for the house.
I do worry about putting her name on the house deed. Years ago she secretly ran up huge credit card debts and couldn’t keep up with minimum payments, so she went to a bank trying to get a home equity line of credit, but they wouldn’t do it because her name wasn’t on the deed. There are things I love about her but this isn’t one of them. I think it’d be much better to have TOD on the house deed, which I’m going to go look up next.
It sounds like before you go with your wife to a wills/trust/estate attorney, you should probably visit an attorney on your own, too. The car title issues are pretty easy to overcome, and I think the advice already given should settle things for you, but having a one-on-one with an attorney will help you figure out what you want to happen to your stuff when you die. This may not be the kind of thing you want to discuss with an attorney with your wife in the same room, and the consultation should allow the attorney to help you figure out things that have never occurred to you (or your wife) that you may want to figure out on your own. For instance, suppose there’s a charity you’ve always supported, and you want to leave something of substantial value when it’s your time (whether it’s a lot of money or something of significant value). Your wife, OTOH, may assume that it’ll become hers if you predecease her. You should come to terms with those things BEFORE the two of you sit down to draw up your wills/trusts, or you could end up wasting a lot of time with said estate attorney - for which you’ll be billed - just negotiating with your wife over your massive collectible spoon displays.
ETA: It’s smart that you’re thinking about this, and you should feel good you’re addressing it before it’s too late. Dying intestate (without a will) benefits nobody other than attorneys, and gums things up for everybody else.
The lawyer can walk you through the “how” of it. By goals, I mean what are you both really hoping to accomplish.
For example, your spouse doesn’t want her name on things for the sake of seeing her name; she wants it there for some reason. To avoid probate? To feel secure? To ensure she isn’t left homeless or carless? If you don’t know the underlying reason, make sure you cover that with her before the meeting.
When we were leaving our lawyers office after setting up our will I casually mentioned that our (then) house was only in my name since I bought it before I met my wife. The lawyer quickly turned us around and dealt with the paperwork to put her name on the deed. She considered it an extremely important action to take in order to make any transitions simpler. It wasn’t significant work, but it needed to be done.
Or sell it or refi? Now your spouse can block that … even if an ex-spouse later on
But that is because he died intestate. If it is in the will, there should be no problem with it going through probate to here. But that is why you pay an attorney to write it up.
There’s a similar way to transfer financial assets upon death. It’s done by specifying beneficiaries on the financial accounts. For instance, you can put a beneficiary on your bank account and then the money will be transferred to that person upon your death. Most financial accounts have ways to do it through your account website. Like the ToD, the transfer of assets through beneficiaries happens outside of probate and is not part of your estate. By making extensive use to ToDs and beneficiaries, you can have most of your real estate, vehicles, and financial assets be distributed outside of probate. The remainder of your estate that will then go through probate will be mostly made up of the leftover odds and ends like tools, furniture, art, etc.