Asking for a friend. By affairs I’m talking about will, health powers etc for reasons other than illness.
A couple examples… married couple expecting first child and married couple with significant assets about to travel extensively overseas.
Related question… would on-line services (Legal zoom or whatever) be adequate?
No rush, just any time before their death would be optimal.
What date is your friend destined to check out?
As long as they are fine with the default disbursement policy of the estate for married people in their state, there’s not necessarily a rush to create a will. Having a will already drawn up will make things simpler and easier, but otherwise the state will disburse the assets according to some basic rules. At a minimum, the couple with the child should come up with a will that states who guardian will be should something happen to them both. They likely would not want the state to decide that matter.
I think we did our wills the first time we travelled without our first kid, largely due to issues around guardianship. That reminds me, due to some family issues with the chosen guardian we really need to update ours.
Does “simpler and easier” = faster?
My sister died unexpectedly last year and without a will. It has been a burden on us, her siblings, to figure it all out while we were also grieving. If you care about making it easier on your loved ones, write a will.
You probably also want to have the agreement of the guardian first, rather than letting it be a surprise.
Yes, it will go faster if you have a will. With a will, it just takes a few days for the executor to get the paperwork to the probate office and get the official documents that allow the estate to be settled. Without a will, then there’s some extra time for the court to declare someone to be an executor and the executor may need to take more time to get things figured out.
If it’s just a couple without kids, it’s not terrible there isn’t a will. The surviving spouse should typically have access to shared assets to cover expenses in the time it takes to be declared the executor. If both people die, then it’s more complicated since the court-appointed executor has to figure things out, but there’s not a lot of urgency to get the estate settled.
Different states distribute estates differently, so it’s important to know what would happen without a will. For example, some states will only give a portion to the surviving spouse with the rest going to parents. If someone doesn’t want the default distribution of their assets, they should make a will to ensure the estate is distributed according to their wishes.
One thing that can make it easier for the estate to be distributed is to make sure your bank and investment accounts have a designated beneficiary. It can be a single person or you can designate different shares to different people. When the person dies, the funds are transferred to the specified people without having to go through the estate and probate process. This way a lot of the cash can be dealt with quickly and then the estate is just left dealing with property and other assets like that.
I started early 20s and usually I’ve used a lawyer. But I’ve had a rather interesting life.
I think that’s key. Even if I’m ok with the state default, I don’t necessarily want anyone to have to wait.
I recall a situation where the surviving spouse’s name wasn’t on the deed for the home, and it took forever before he or she could sell the property. But I don’t know much about the topic. Or the details of the story, so I could have something wrong.
Everybody legally old enough to sign one should fill out a health care proxy; including considering the questions about your wishes, and if possible discussing that consideration with the people you’re naming as proxy.
Anybody, at any age, can have a sudden head injury or unexpected stroke. If you care at all what equipment you might wind up hooked up to for how long, or if you care in the other direction that you’re going to want everything conceivable done to keep you breathing as close to forever as possible, get something in writing when you’re sure you’ve got the chance to do so. If you think you don’t care, then consider the amount of weight it will lift off the shoulders of those who will have to decide for you; as well as the potential reduction of arguments if they disagree with each other.
You don’t have to try to decide for all possible medical circumstances – the proxy is to give general guidelines, and to authorize who can speak for you if needed if a specific circumstance does arise. And if you’re halfway competent, you can withdraw or change it at any time.
Frankly I’m not sure what a “health care proxy” is. This may be one of those circumstances where the nomenclature is different depending on where you live.
Mr. Middon and I each have a Power Of Attorney for Healthcare. We hold each other’s primary POA, but have a secondary person named. If we are both in a horrendous accident, we might need someone to make health care decisions for us. We each also have Advance Directives that state our preferences on how far to go when treating us if death is likely.
In addition, we have POA for financial decisions. If an accident makes it so that neither of us can handle our financial affairs, we want someone authorized to pay our bills. Be a shame if we woke up from our respective comas to find the county has seized our house for nonpayment of real estate taxes.
Traveling in the sense of far away or traveling in the sense of going to the grocery store? Because couples die close from home also.
We had wills as soon as my wife got pregnant.
California in particular has terrible probate fees, so anyone with any reasonable amount of money has a trust. Our will distributes our physical assets, the trust does the money. Most everything we own of any value is in the trust - house, car, and the trust is beneficiary of my personal 401Ks and IRAs.
If you live in California and aren’t poor, you should see a lawyer.
The mother of one of my oldest childhood friends just died a couple of weeks ago, and amazingly enough after 8+ years of Stage 4 ovarian cancer, she never made a will.
I do not envy my friend having to deal with her mother’s estate, especially having to reach consensus with her 2 siblings - one of whom lives overseas and the other of whom has a lifetime of struggles with addiction.
Yeah, with my sister, none of us are contesting anything and we are all on the same page, but it still hasn’t been resolved almost a year later. It’s just this long, shitty process that we have to go through on top of all the sadness.
We went to Las Vegas and left our daughter with my wife’s parents. I don’t disagree that we should have done it earlier, but we didn’t.
My husband and I wrote our wills, advance directives, etc., within a few months of getting married. We updated them after having a child, and at least twice after that.
At the very latest they should get things in order when they start having families of their own. Not that I had my things in order when I was their age. During new employee orientation I encourage them to contribute something to their 401(k) and I also encourage them to consider taking advantage of the life insurance policies we offer. We automatically give our employees some life insurance at no cost to them but it’s only about $80,000 for most of them. And a lot of them think that’s a lot of money not realizing how quickly that money can spent. They need to consider the well being of their family not just in the short term but where are they going to be in 5 or 10 years after you’re gone?