When should you update your Last Will and Testament?

It’s a common statistic that 65-70% of adults have not written their Will, however, one of the lesser reported stats is that the majority of the Wills that are in place, are out-of-date and should have been revised. The difficulty of course is that finding the time and money to create a Will in the first place can be prohibitive, so booking an appointment and paying the same professional fees again to make a change to that Will is out of reach for most people.

Unfortunately, when you create a Will with a lawyer or solicitor you really have no idea how long that Will is going to last. By the time you get home from the lawyer’s office, your Will could be out of date. There’s a standard set of reasons for updating your Will that you’ll find on many lawyers’ websites. These include obvious things like a change in marital status, birth of a new child or the death of a family member or beneficiary. Clearly, updating a Will immediately having a child may not be at the forefront of your mind, and sadly we do see countless examples of parents of young children not getting around to writing a new Will immediately after a child is born.

In reality though, the need to update a Will is more nuanced than that. You not only have to look at changes to your own situation, but also any changes in circumstance of anybody, or anything, mentioned in your Will. So, here’s a little test, which of these situations might prompt an update to your Will?

• The person that you have named as your Executor has been convicted of a crime and is serving time in prison.
• The person that you have named as personal guardian for your children has had triplets of their own
• You have purchased a new summer property
• Your daughter has got married
• Your son is proving to be extremely irresponsible with his money
• Your alternate Executor has died
• You have sold your house
• Your Executor has changed their name

I think for most of these examples, the recommendation would be to update your Will, but when you are working with a legal professional, it may seem an expensive and inconvenient proposition to book an appointment to make a relatively trivial change. This is why many people are turning to online services like the ones at LegalWills.ca , LegalWills.co.uk and USLegalWills.com. These services allow you to set up an account, from which you can update your Will whenever you need to. You then make the change, print the new document and sign it in the presence of two witnesses to create a new legal Last Will and Testament.

Some people update their Will every few months based on their interactions with the people around them; a dinner party gone wrong, a snubbed invitation, an unwelcome comment about an inheritance. You are certainly free to update your Will whenever you wish, but going through this exercise every time a beneficiary falls in and out of favour will not necessarily result in your estate plan reflecting your final wishes. It may make more sense to update your Will after a change in circumstance rather than a change in heart.

The most important message is that an outdated Will can be worse than no Will at all. You should double check your Will whenever there is a significant event for anybody mentioned in the document and make any required changes. At a bear minimum you should read through your Will once a year to confirm that it still reflects your wishes and that your instructions can still be carried out.

Can you solve your debt issues in your Will?

This is a guest post by Sophie Kinsella, finance blogger. She is a guest columnist, blogger, author for various websites and communities including Oak View Law Group. She has completed her Post Graduation in Social Welfare from California University and is currently working with a reputed Bank located in California. She loves to write articles during her free time especially on topics like bankruptcy, investment opportunities, monetary policies, etc

The property of a deceased person is utilized for paying off the probate and making payment for his own funeral expenses. Then the amount that is remaining is used for paying off the debts. In this situation, the debts will be paid off first before the property is distributed among the beneficiaries. Therefore, a deceased person’s credit card debts will be paid off before the property is distributed among his beneficiaries. 

Know whether a Will can distribute secured debts:

But if you have secured debts then the creditor can repossess your property if the debts are not paid off. But there is an exception to this rule if you have secured debts. If the deceased person has taken loan against collateral in this case the property will be distributed among the beneficiaries but the debt will go with it. For instance if a deceased person takes out a mortgage loan but the house is left for someone in the last will then it will be the beneficiary’s obligation to pay off the loan.

Know the consequences when you owe more than you own:

You cannot inherit your father’s debt in general but if your father owes more than he owns then the estate property will be sold out completely to pay off the debts. In this situation, you will not inherit the property but it will be used to pay off the debts.

You are required to pay off the estate or gift taxes according to the Last Will and Testament. The executor’s name that has been mentioned in the last “Will” of the deceased person shall decide which pieces of property will be sold to pay off the debts.

Can debts be received and forgiven in a Will?

If a deceased person owes money then this money will be accumulated and added to his beneficiaries overall estate. In the last will of a deceased person the debts can be chosen to be forgiven. In this situation, the deceased person does not leave property but provide forgiveness of a specific debt.

How not to write a Last Will and Testament

People are sometimes scared away from writing their own Will. Lawyers will claim that it is a difficult task that only people in the legal profession truly understand, and with some scaremongering, convince people that they should pay a lot of money for legal advice even though their wishes may be very simple. We’ve presented many arguments over the last few months explaining that writing a Will is certainly something within the intellectual means of many people, particularly with interactive tools that are available today. At the same time, we warn people against the use of cheap kits or blank forms, or even preparing a Will starting with a blank sheet of paper.

There are definitely certain legal elements that have to belong in every Will and it is possible that in attempting to handwrite a Will from scratch, these elements can be overlooked. An example  of how it can all go wrong made the press last month in the case of Irish poet John O’Donohue and his €2 million estate.

Mr O’Donohue was an educated man, he wrote poetry and philosophy for a living, so it would seem that writing a Will should be easily within his intellectual capabilities. Particularly when his wishes were seemingly quite straightforward; he wanted everything that he owned to go to his mother to be divided equally between his family. But he made at least two terrible mistakes in his Will. He went on to wish that his sister was to receive extra care and help and that some funds should go as specific bequests to other individuals. Generally a court would try and respect a person’s wishes if they can be deciphered, but in this Will there were both “mutually exclusive” wishes and there were also extra bequests that could not be quantified or sourced. In other words, you can’t say “leave everythingI own to John Doe and leave a half of everything I own to Jane Doe”.

The other critical mistake was that the witnesses to the signing of the document were his mother and brother; both beneficiaries  in the Will. This alone in most jurisdictions would nullify the Will as there would always be a suspicion of coercion if the witnesses are also beneficiaries.

So, what are the important lessons here? At first it would be easy to make this a shining example of why you should not prepare your own Will, but I think this is an over-reaction. If you use an interactive service like the one at LegalWills.ca, USLegalWills.com and LegalWills.co.uk you are guided through the process each step of the way. The signing instructions are included as part of the service, and yes, it is a good idea to read them. Put simply, to make your document legal it must be signed in the presence of two (or sometimes three depending on the jurisdiction) witnesses who cannot benefit from the contents of the Will. This means beneficiaries for sure, and also in some places the spouse of a beneficiary cannot serve as a witness. They are some other criteria as well; adults, of sound mind etc.

It is also important to read through one’s Will once it is completed to make sure there are no conflicting requests. You can’t leave the same thing to more than one person.

John O’Donohue’s story is a sad one (not so much for his mother who ended up inheriting everything), but it should not scare people away from writing their own Will. If you have a straightforward situation it is well within the capabilities of most people to use an interactive tool to prepare their Will. However, do not use a blank kit, and do not attempt to write one yourself starting with a blank piece of paper.

New Year’s Resolutions and your Last Will and Testament

January is always our busiest month of the year at LegalWills; it is a time for reflection and also a time for looking to the future. Over the holidays many of us have spent time with relatives and discussed family matters. There may have been a conversation about a family member who passed away in 2011, and the chances are that person made a mess of their estate planning (the vast majority of people don’t even have a Will in place). Maybe around the dinner table on Christmas Day there was a discussion about your own family’s succession and estate planning; who will get the cottage? or maybe Grandad promised you his pocket watch. One important talk that we had was the difficult discussion surrounding the guardianship of our daughter; who would the most appropriate guardian be, and would they be prepared to take on the responsibility?

New Year’s Resolutions are often made in the area of healthcare and financial wellbeing, and these are the very areas addressed in a complete estate plan. Two key healthcare documents are the Living Will and Power of Attorney which allow you to both express your own wishes if you are ever unable to speak for yourself, and also allow you to appoint somebody to make both financial and healthcare decisions on your behalf. Along with eating a healthier diet, and working out, it should be a resolution to get the most important documents in place; life insurance, powers of attorney and a living Will.

Financially there is probably no more important document than a Last Will and Testament, it is part of a sound financial plan and not a document to be written just before you die (chances are, when your death is imminent it will not be a convenient time to write a Will).   The New Year is a great time to either create a Will, or review one that is already in place. It makes sense to; review your choice of personal guardian for your children, make sure that you have chosen the most appropriate person to serve as Executor of your estate, and take another look at your beneficiaries. So you may have a resolution to keep an eye on your spending, save money where possible, try to increase your income. But the most important step in your financial planning is to put your Last Will and Testament together.

It only takes about 30 minutes and is very affordable if you use one of the interactive online services now available like www.legalwills.ca , www.uslegalwills.com and www.legalwills.co.uk. There is no legal requirement to pay for the services of a lawyer or solicitor to create a Will, everybody has a legal right to prepare their own Will.

So why not cross one resolution off today and get your estate planning documents in order?

Free Last Will and Testament forms

We’ve seen a number of these recently; the “free” or the $5 Last Will and Testament. In fact, I’ll offer you one right here; a Free Last Will and Testament form . But be warned, it’s an absolute piece of garbage and will probably cause more problems for your family and loved ones than not creating one at all. 

The market is becoming crowded for online Will services.

At www.legalwills.ca , www.uslegalwills.com and www.legalwills.co.uk we charge $34.95 and  £24.95. We do this because we have worked with top legal teams in Canada, the US and UK to create our services. We have a support team in place who can help users step through the process and we have professional affiliations. We also stand by our services as top quality, legal, affordable alternatives to seeking legal advice. We know that our service is not appropriate for everybody, and we often recommend that some people with complicated situations not use our service and instead seek legal advice.

So what does a $5 Last Will and Testament give you? Some websites operate like the Giant Tiger of legal forms; they have hundreds or thousands of downloadable PDF’s which probably will not work for you; there will be no alternate provisions, help text, support, residual beneficiaries, minor trusts, and it is quite possible that you will write something in your Will that is simply not legally permitted e.g. disinheriting dependents. But a $5 Will company does not care about this.

I’m actually surprised by the quality of many online sites that claim to have been created by lawyers. They obviously have no concerns that a large number of people will use their service thinking that they have a legal Will, when many will be legally invalid. I’m not sure how the law societies will feel about the quality of product being created by these lawyers. Sadly, we cannot compete on price with a downloadable pdf form. But we do feel good about our service and know that quality legal documents have been created by tens of thousands of people.

Many articles talk about the dangers of preparing your own Will, and it is really the cheap, daily discount Wills that are being dismissed in these articles. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to discern a quality online service and a poor one. Look for services that are interactive (not downloadable blank forms), have been in place for a while, have online help with phone and email support, and a service that generates a final document that runs at least 4-5 pages. If it doesn’t, then it has not included all of the clauses that should be in a basic Will. I wish I could just list services that you should not use, but that is probably a bad idea.