We Need a Will
My wife and I have been making do with a pair of old, do-it-yourself wills that I prepared using an old version of WillMaker (formerly from Nolo Press, now an Intuit product). To give you an idea of just how old this software is, it's not even Y2K ready -- the last time I updated our wills (about four years ago) I had to manually edit the output file to change the year from 1901 to 2001. Anyway, things have changed dramatically for us in the past few years. Both our finances and family have grown. In fact, our two youngest kids aren't even mentioned in our wills. Thus, it seems like it's time for an update.
Our current wills are pretty standard stuff... If I die, everything goes to my wife with our kids as secondary beneficiaries. If my wife dies, everything goes to me with the kids as secondary beneficiaries. We've named a guardian for the kids but, beyond that, we haven't done any additional estate planning. I'm not really sure what more we need at this point but, given our dramatic increase in responsibility, it seems to me like it's time to think about enlisting professional help -- if for no other reason than the peace of mind that comes from knowing that all of our 'i's are dotted and our 't's are crossed (legally speaking). It's going to take us a bit to get going on this, but I plan on chronicling the process here once we get the ball rolling.
Got an opinion as to things we should be considering? Thoughts? Advice?
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"We Need a Will" was first published at fivecentnickel.com
I just ran across a relatively new book on estate planning called "Crash Course in Estate Planning : The Essential Guide to Wills, Trusts, and Your Personal Legacy" by Michael Palermo. It's published by AARP, so it may end up being targeted more toward retirees ... Read
As a followup to my earlier post about needing a will, I ran across a list of tips for preparing your estate plan. Among the twelve easy steps are... Read
As a parent, I've recently been thinking of all the responsible things that I should be doing to ensure the well being of my family in the (hopefully) unlikely event that I drop dead. Worse yet, perhaps my wife and I will both drop dead ... Read
I'm kind of stuck in the same situation, but w/o the kids. This same question has been eating away at me and has me wondering how to go about tackeling this issue. Are you planning on using Willmaker again? Were you happy with it?
WillMaker was fine, and I'm sure it would be more than sufficient if you don't have kids. I'm just worried about the legalese having to do with guardianship, etc. I really don't want there to be any chance that I'll leave my kids in some sort of limbo.
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http://www.fivecentnickel.com/
I used Willmaker to do my wills but I really suggest everyone pick up a Estate Planning book. Once I read one it realized I needed to build more than just a Will and decided to set up a Trust (I have a small child too). Basically a Will does not protect your assets from probate if you have sizeable assets. Do yourself a favor and get this book if you have kids:
The Living Trust : The Failproof Way to Pass Along Your Estate to Your Heirs
Luckily Willmaker can do Trusts and you don't need a professional to do it (which the book mentions). This book was awesome. I set up a Living Trust with Willmaker after reading the book. My parents had a living trust created by a professional and the Willmaker one was almost the same (with some minor tweaks based on our own choices of course). I also tweaked the Trust document Willmaker made to include a few things suggested on the book before I had it notarized. Good Luck!
Jman
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