Archive for the ‘Estate Planning’ Category

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Do you have a blended family?

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

My parents were divorced and my dad remarried a woman who had children, so I come from a ‘blended’ family.  I am also divorced from my children’s father and I’m now married to a man who has children from his first marriage.   All to say that I know what it’s like to live in a ‘blended’ family.

I’ve heard that the schools now have projects to trace your family ‘bush’ instead of your family ‘tree’.  It’s a sign of the times.

But, the laws haven’t quite caught up with society.

A step-child, even if they have been in your household and you have acted as their parent for their entire lives, is not considered your child for inheritance purposes.  And problems can arise when a current spouse and children from a previous relationship all want to take ‘their rightful portion’ of an inheritance.

There are ways to take care of the ones you love by talking to an Estate Planning attorney and making sure that your estate is used the way you want.  This is important for everyone.

It is even more important if you have a blended family.

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

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Posted in Estate Plan, Estate Planning, Trust, Will | No Comments »

Is an adopted child considered blood line in a will?

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

I found this question on the internet awhile ago, and thought that others might have the same question themselves.

In this case, there wasn’t a lot of information other than the fact that this man had adopted his wife’s child, but wanted to make sure that all of his inheritances in his Will would pass only to his bloodline.

Legally, as soon as you adopt a child, it is considered YOUR child for all intents and purposes.  By law, there is no distinction between a child by blood and a child by adoption.  Generally, when the adoption is finalized, the child loses the legal connection to the birth parents and gains the legal connection to the adoptive parents.

This is different than the status of a step-child.  A step-child is not considered your child for any legal action, even though you were the parent for the child’s entire life.

There are ways of drafting your Will, Trust or other estate planning documents to create your desired end result.

You can disinherit any of your children by putting the language into the document.  It doesn’t have to be an adopted child.  I have had clients who wanted to make sure that one of their children did not get anything when they died because of things that child did, or perhaps they have already given one child more than his or her share and now wanted to make sure that what was left would go to another child.

Some people also give different amounts to different children by naming them specifically along with a percentage of the estate value

In this man’s case, he could write his Will so that his adopted child did not inherit something that he felt strongly should be kept in the blood line.

I’ve also had clients who wanted to make sure that their step-children were treated the same as their biological children.    I had one client who wanted to make sure that their son’s step-daughter was treated as any of their other grandchildren.

This is relatively easy to accomplish with the right drafting, but you need to make sure it is done correctly or you will not get your desired result.  Even worse, you might end up with a document that causes your family to spend lots of dollars, even the entire value of your estate, in litigation to fight over what you really meant when you wrote that you wanted your things to go to ‘your bloodline’.   This is one good example of why it is important to go to an Estate Planning professional instead of trying a ‘do it yourself’ plan that you find in the store, on software, or on the internet.

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

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Posted in Adoption, Children, Estate Plan, Estate Planning, Will | No Comments »

When does a Will become effective?

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately about when a Will becomes effective.  One of these questions was from a son whose mother had a habit of writing and rewriting her Will on a regular basis to delete one or another of her children as a beneficiary based on who was the last person to visit the mother.  Another question was from a man whose brother had died and he wanted to know if a written, but unsigned, copy of a Will was effective.

A Will is a document that tells the world (and most importantly, the court) how you want your ‘stuff’ distributed after you have died.  Most people think of this as telling the world about your plan for the inheritance of your estate.

Contrary to popular belief, a Will does not become effective when it is written, or when it is signed, or even when it is executed correctly with all of the proper witnesses and signatures and put in a safe-deposit box.

A properly executed Will becomes effective the moment after the person who is the subject of the Will takes their last breath.  That is, only when the person who is the subject of the Will has died.

This is because as long as a person is alive, they can change their minds about what they want to do.  Most Wills have some verbiage that says something to the effect that the person revokes any and all existing Wills and that this is now their Last Will and Testament.  But if they are still alive, they can always come back next year, or next week, and do the same thing again.

Also, unless the Will was executed with all of the correct processes and procedures, it is just a bunch of words on a paper and basically worthless.  If you want your Will to be effective at your death, you need to have the proper execution formalities for your jurisdiction.

The last Will that was properly executed before your death is the one that the courts will find to be effective, even if you had changed your mind and thought you were making the right changes in later documents.

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

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What is a ‘Life Estate’?

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

I had a question this week from a potential client who knew that her brother was allowed to live in her deceased mother’s house until he died and then the house was supposed to be divided equally between the remaining sisters and brothers.  This arrangement is called a ‘life estate’, and it means that the brother has lawful possession as long as he is alive.  The other sisters and brothers are called ‘remaindermen’.

A more common example is when a parent (for our example we will say the mother) dies leaving a spouse and children.  The spouse later remarries and wants to make sure that his new wife will not need to move out of the family home if something should happen to him.  He grants a life estate to his new wife with the remainder of the ownership going to his children at her death.

This sounds like a simple way to handle things and you may wonder why it isn’t used more often.

One problem is that the life estate ends when the named person dies.  This means that if the named person is sick or in a nursing home, the remainder owners do not have the right to do anything with the property until the named person dies.

There is also the problem that a person with a ‘life estate’ can only give or sell what he owns.  That means that he can’t sell the house to anyone else, or make arrangements for someone else to live in the house either.  This has caused problems like the situation where an uncle had a life estate in the family home and put in his Will that the home should go to his favorite niece.  She thought it was hers, except that the uncle didn’t have ownership to give!  Once he died, the house belonged to the ‘remaindermen’.

In the case of the person who called our office, the brother had gotten married and the family wanted to know if his wife would inherit the house if the brother died.  (the answer is no…because once he died, his life estate ended).

Then, there is the problem of who is supposed to pay the bills for the house.  You may think that the person living in the house should be paying the bills.  But what if the house needs a new roof that is expected to last 30 years?  Should a 90 year old person with a life estate be required to put a new roof on the home, even though it is unlikely that he will be in the home long enough to use it all?

A Life Estate can also be set to terminate on the death of someone else.  For example, let’s suppose mother has four children.  Son 1 is disabled and cannot live on his own.  Daughter 1 is not disabled and has agreed to take care of son 1.  Son 2 and Daughter 2 are both married and living in another state with their respective families.  Mother wants to make sure that Daughter 1 has a home in which to care for Son 1 so she grants a life estate to Daughter 1 for so long as Son 1 is alive, with the remainder being divided equally between the 3 remaining children when Son 1 dies.    What this means is that Daughter 1 will probably need to move out of the home after Son 1 dies because otherwise she would need to be able to purchase the other 2/3 of the house from her remaining siblings.

I’ve even seen a case where a cat lover gave a life estate in her home to her friend for so long as her favorite cat was alive so that the friend could take care of the cat and the cat would not need to move to a strange house.

As you can see, a Life Estate can be a useful tool in your estate planning arsenal, but only if it is planned correctly.

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

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Being Prepared Works!

Monday, August 29th, 2011

I hope this finds everyone safe.  Hurricane Irene has come and gone and it appears that most of us on the Virginia Peninsula are ok, although some of us are still without power.

I know that in my family, we are fine.  We were pretty lucky in that the power in our house never went out.  However, we put all of our frozen foods into a cooler with dry ice ‘just in case’.  We also brought in everything from the yard that might be picked up in the high winds, tied down those things that couldn’t be moved inside, and got most of the ‘stuff’ off of the floor in the garage (our garage almost always floods in a storm).  We moved our vehicles to higher ground so they wouldn’t be flooded.

And then we left town since the area where our house is located was told to evacuate.

It was hard to sit and wait with that feeling of being powerless.  However, it helped that we had done everything we could to be prepared for whatever might have happened.

I think of this today as I am also grateful that we have the proper legal documents to assist our family if an emergency were to happen and we were unavailable.  We have the Power of Attorney so that someone could pay our bills.  We have the medical directive so that our family would know what to do if we were injured and unable to make our own decisions.  We have the Will and Trust documents so that our property could pass more easily in the case of our deaths.

Estate plans are just one more way to be prepared.

I could have been really irritated that we went to so much trouble last Friday to get prepared for things that (luckily) we did not need.  Instead, it was comforting to know that our preparations were done ‘just in case’.

If you want to discuss how you can be prepared for a personal emergency, call the office for an estate plan consultation!

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

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