WILLS & ESTATE PLANNING

Making a No-Frills Will

Forget the fancy trusts you may have heard about. A simple will may be all you need.

Weve all been told that if we do nothing else to take care of our legal affairs, we should write a will. Thats pretty good advice. If you dont make a will before your death, state law will determine who gets your property (and it may well not be whom you would have chosen), and a judge may decide who will raise your children. In your will, you can make these decisions yourself.

If all you need is a basic will, you can confidently use a good self-help book or software to make a legally binding will that:

• leaves your property to the people and organizations you choose
• names a guardian to care for your minor children if you cant
• names someone to manage property you leave to minor children (yours or someone elses), and
• names your

When a Basic Will Is Enough

By and large, if you are under age 50 and dont expect to leave assets valuable enough to be subject to estate taxes, you can probably get by with only a basic will. But as you grow older and acquire more property, you may want to engage in more sophisticated planning -- we go into these details below.

Here are a few other examples of real-life situations where a basic will is all thats needed.

• Heather and Jerome, in their late 30s, own a home, two cars, and some savings. Their net worth totals $400,000. They have one child, Mark, age 11. Each prepares a will leaving all his or her property to the other. If they die at the same time, Mark is to receive all their property. Heather and Jerome agree that Heathers brother will care for Mark and manage the property until Mark turns 18.
• Sam, a widower with three grown children, owns property with a net worth of $510,000. He creates a will leaving all his property equally to the children. He specifies that if any child dies before him, that childs share is to be divided equally between the surviving children.
• Barbara is a single mother with two teenage children. Though shes not on great terms with her ex-husband, hes a decent father and pays child support more or less on time. Barbaras will leaves all her property equally to her children. Because she does not want her ex-husband managing money left to her children if she dies, she uses her will to appoint her sister Debbie to manage each childs property until that child turns 18.

Will a Basic Will Avoid Probate?

No. If you leave anything more than a small amount of property through a will,

But if you need only a basic will, you have little reason to concern yourself now with probate. If youre relatively young and healthy, and you dont have piles of money, your real concern is to make legal arrangements for the statistically unlikely event that you will die suddenly and unexpectedly. Youve almost certainly got plenty of time to plan for probate avoidance later.

Is a Basic Will for You?

If the following statements describe you, a basic will is probably enough:

• Youre under age 50.
• Youre in pretty good health.
• You dont expect to owe estate tax at your death (you have less then $2 million in assets).

On the other hand, if one of the following applies to your situation, then you probably need something more than a basic will:

• You expect to owe Estate Taxes Resource Center.)
• You want to control what happens to property after your death -- for example, you want to leave some property in trust for your child, and have it go to your grandchildren when your child dies.
• You have a child with a disability or other special need that you wish to address in your estate plan. (See Special Needs Trusts.)
• You have children from a prior marriage and you fear conflict between them and your current spouse.
• You think someone might contest your will, claiming that you were not mentally competent when writing it, or that the will was procured by fraud or duress.