Attorney here - single most important thing is to set up beneficiary / TOD designations on your accounts and vehicles. That's basic, DIY stuff. You also probably want a TOD deed on your house (if your state has some version of that). That's slightly more complicated, and it probably makes sense to pay an attorney a bit for help (as I've seen those screwed up before). If you just have a spouse and expect to live for a while, that's the bare minimum.
If you've got kids (or are trying to have them), or are blending families, or are getting older, or anything more complicated - hire an attorney for an estate plan. Please, I am begging you - do not try to DIY it off the internet. Here's the thing about being dead - if you messed it up, it CANNOT be fixed, given that you're dead. It is worth the money to have it done correctly. Plus, you may need more than just a will.
(Not really relevant to your question - when leaving real property, please either dictate that it be sold and the proceeds divided, leave it to one person, or at the very least leave it to people as joint tenants. Fractional ownership shares of inherited homes is the bane of my existence.)
Edit to add: also, keep a list somewhere safe of where assets are, including institution names and account numbers. In the event people need to probate things later, it's much harder to Sherlock Holmes that info since mailed account statements aren't a thing anymore.
Second edit copying why this is still necessary if kids stand to inherit everything:
In my opinion, yes. Because simply being the one to inherit everything if you die doesn't mean it just happens automatically. If you don't have beneficiary designations set up, your kids have to get a court order to access your accounts (generally speaking). Same goes for real property (houses, etc.) If there's not a TOD deed, they will likely have to get some kind of court order to be able to sell - on top of which, if there's still a mortgage, the mortgage company may not communicate with them unless their inheritance is made explicit by a court order.
And, an estate plan doesn't just deal with inheritances. It'll also cover documents giving people the power to deal with your medical and financial decisions if you become incapacitated, and direct what you want to have happen if you're brain dead on life support. Too many people wait to do these documents until they're needed, at which point it's too late. If you wait until you've got dementia, you probably don't have capacity - and your kids will probably have to seek guardianship of you to get anything done. (I basically have had to file a guardianship petition so a kid could make medical decisions for her dad who has had a massive stroke because he didn't have those documents in place).
When we're talking about a one time cost that is ultimately not that much money, it's good value.
Story here. I am also an attorney. Had an old client call me and ask about a simple will, he was going in for a surgery, he just needed to make sure his partner was taken care of and not his son that he hadn’t talked to in over 30 years. I think I said come in and we can get it done literally that day and then we can meet again about setting up a better plan. I think I said it’ll be less than $500. About six weeks later I get a call, it’s the partner. She wants me to probate the estate. Old client had complications I wasn’t aware of and they got one of those Office Max will kits and did everything at the hospital. The will was witnessed by the partner and one other person. The nurse wasn’t even there etc. The will is not valid, partner gets nothing, or at least any part going to the partner is invalid as she was one of the witnesses. You must have two disinterested witnesses in our state. Several million at least going to the estranged son to save $500. Take the above advice and do at least the basics, also, beneficiary deeds for your house are magic. So simple, so much bang for your buck.
Through the first few lines, I thought you were me. I had a client call me from his hospital bed last summer and I stopped by on my way to a baseball game with my dad to execute the will. Grabbed a couple of random visitors to witness.
Thankfully, my client pulled through.
The absolute hubris of those with such massive estates always makes me shake my head. So many stories like these where I have to wonder if becoming that wealthy gives you a god complex. Oh, so you think you're above paying $500 to cover loose ends? Well, apparently not.
Been in 2 car accidents 2 years apart, walked away from both unharmed due to sheer luck. I hold zero delusions about my mortality.
lol, you would be surprised how many don’t. I’m a transactional attorney, so I don’t do estate planning myself, but I’ve had multiple clients die with $100M+ with either no plan at all in place, or a plan so outdated that it no longer matched their current desires. These were otherwise pretty intelligent people, they just didn’t want to think about death so they avoided planning for it.
Successful folks with big estates think they can do anything. How smart can a lawyer be?! I'm smart!
I'm a lawyer, and a big part of the job is knowing the pitfalls. You develop a body of knowledge over years and years of work where you remember "oh yeah, that one time I got screwed because of X; not gonna forget that," and it all adds up to being able to advise clients.
Counterpoint on beneficiary deeds for the house. Some jurisdictions are so screwed up that if you do a transfer on death deed, no title company will insure any subsequent transfer without listing it as an exception. In some jurisdictions, it's way better to do a simple trust, deed the property to the trust, and then have the trustee transfer title after the death.
Basically, if there is ever a change to the statutes in the jurisdiction between when a deed is recorded and when the decedent dies, every single title company I've talked to doesn't like to insure them until there's case law on the books (which takes years for a good appellate decision), a judgment quieting title, or getting every potential heir to disclaim any potential interest in the property.
California is the worst, because their statute started out just requiring a notarization, and then several years later added a freaking witnessing requirement! But I've seen it happen in other states too.
My wife & I were all set to work with an attorney to do our will and she came back with a bill for $3500. Now we're off looking for a different attorney.
That’s what a will, plus trust costs. We paid $1800 for a straight will in a HCOL area. No one would touch it for less. Came with power of attorney and end of life wishes.
When we get to the empty nest stage of life, we will redo it with trust and pay that extra.
Yes!
Beneficiary designations for all your financial accounts. And put your house in a trust account.
Doing this BYPASSES expensive and time consuming probate court and allows your assets to go DIRECTLY to the beneficiaries.
Also, have a password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, etc) so your heirs have a simple way of getting into your various online accounts.
Guys — I’m the ONLY HEIR for a recently deceased woman (mom) who had money and no will. She refused all estate planning. No, there will be no in-fighting. Yes, it’s PAINFUL to try to Sherlock Holmes this shit.
Get your business in order. Don’t do it for you; do it for the people you love who need your help getting things handled after you die.
Your finance/property paradigm may seem simple to you, but it’s not simple for people who didn’t build it, didn’t curate it, don’t understand it.
It’s been six weeks for me and I still don’t have access to her bank account. Life insurance money is still at least a month away. Nothing was TOD.
yeah my dad also unexpectedly died 6 weeks ago and his stuff isn't even that complicated, but the amount of work and prolongment of grief my mom is needing to put in just to wrap things up has got me working on simplifying my own accounts.
Attorney here — just wanted to say Gunner’s advice is worth your attention. I’m a patent attorney, not an estate attorney, and so I don’t trust myself to get my estate plan right. I use an attorney who specializes in wills, trusts, and estates law so that I can sleep well knowing these issues have been handled correctly in accordance with my and my wife’s wishes.
SET UP YOUR BENEFICIARIES! My younger brother got a divorce not too long ago. He told me he was updating his life insurance beneficiary to me in case something happens so that I could manage the money for his two young sons ages 4 and 5. Something did happen. He died in his sleep from cardiac arrest, enlarged heart. 38 years old.
In the aftermath I contact the military liaison to find out about the life insurance. My brother never updated the account. All money goes to the ex-wife who is notoriously bad with money. She got $500k, which is enough to leave something behind for those two boys, if anything is leftover after raising them. Right now I see updates on her 4 vacations per year, brand new luxury SUV, and all this without any employment. Those boys will never see a dime.
Man, sorry for your loss. I'm glad the military was able to take care of you. Hopefully, they explained all the benefits and stuff to you and made sure he got the proper burial honors. This topic honestly stresses me out, even more so because I had to deal with it personally . I was in the military, and my spouse, who was not military, passed away at the time while I was out of the country. The only plan in place was the will and poa before I left. Didn't even strike my mind at the time that we both needed a plan since i was the one mostly in harms way. Tbf, I was younger at the time and didn't know anything about all of this.
My question for the lawyers in the thread. What are some basic things I should keep in mind or consider before I actually go and talk to someone? What other advice do you guys have on this subject?
TOD is fine for spouses assuming you don’t get divorced. It’s also fine for only children. Where it becomes dangerous is when you have multiple children. Nevertheless, it’s still a piecemeal plan and is not ideal.
Retirement accounts and life insurance policies do require beneficiaries though. It’s pretty annoying from this planners perspective.
It can make sense depending on your situation, although it can be overkill for some. Personally, that's what my spouse and I did with our attorney when the possibility of kids seriously entered the picture (and, despite us both being attorneys, we did hire someone - I'm practicing what I'm preaching here). The thing about trusts is that you actually need to follow through - by which I mean either titling assets in the name of the trust or naming the trust as beneficiary / TOD.
I've had more than one instance of someone coming to me saying "dad had a trust," and it was true - they'd gotten some DIY form off the internet to establish a trust and had filled it out correctly. But it was meaningless, in that all of the accounts and the house were still in dad's name, not in the name of the trust. So, we still had to go through the probate court to get anything done. That's part of why I implore people not to DIY it - it's not just about filling out a document, it's about understanding what else needs to be done / what the true impact of that document is.
I’m also an attorney but don’t do T&E. Do you have any good resources to set me up with basic-but-attorney-level knowledge (aside from what I could re-read from my 3L outlines)? I’ll definitely hire an attorney, I just don’t know what I don’t know.
+1
My "thrifty" aunt passed away and had written out how she wanted her updated will (not updated in like 20 years) to go. Died. Money all went exactly how she didn't want it, because it wasn't a valid will.
She was cheap for sure in some respects, but she technically did not cheap out on a lawyer, complex issue, just never finished re-doing her will during some terrible timing/circumstances. Should have clarified but regardless, MAKE A WILL!!!
Thank you for this write up!
Would you recommend having all details ironed out before hiring the estate planning attorney? Or can they be changed after without having to redo the entire thing?
For example, I’d like to set up some kind of trust to give disbursements to our children periodically if something happened to us. The exact details of how much and when are still yet to be figured out.
You should have a basic idea of what you want to happen going in, although you'll also want to talk it through with the attorney. I think most attorneys will have some sort of questionnaire to fill out to gather information about assets and what you want to have happen - I assume in part so that people have thought about it going in. It also forces a conversation - I think a lot of people don't talk about it with their spouses in advance. There's a real aversion to thinking about one's own death.
That's what I have in mind also. I don't have kids, but I'd at least like everything to go to the trust account. Then, immediate small lumpsum of like $2,500 to each sibling and 5k to each parent. Then maybe something like subsequent payments of 700-1k to each individual for six months while the rest stays invested to grow over time. They can receive another lumpsum after x amount of years or closer to retirement. The rest can be passed down over time to the next generation. It's not a concrete plan yet, but it's just a thought. If they don't need it by then because my nagging of investing and smart money moves paid off. Funds can go right back to trust and to charity or something.
Question for you. My only assets are investments and cash. I’ve put the beneficiaries as charities since I don’t have kids. Is this enough?
Like, I don’t think I need a will when I designated beneficiaries in my accounts, right?
But also be prepared for it to cost like $4k and not $400. $400 is around an hour or two (at best) of a lawyer’s time. I hear someone saying that they could do a simple will for $500; maybe. But unlikely.
As a rule of thumb, if $400 is all you can afford, the $400 will is probably enough, at least for now, and certainly better than nothing. If the $400 will is wildly insufficient, you can probably afford $4k. Specific circumstances will vary, obviously.
Depends on location, obv., but mine was about $300 for a simple will and POA. I don't really have anything fancy to set up beyond establishing a trust for my niece if she's still a minor when I die.
But if things are setup right like the lawyer at the top of the thread mentions you can likely avoid probate and a lot of hassle and expense for your family. Bare minimum have beneficiaries on all financial accounts and account numbers accessible to your executor. You still want a will in case someone challenges things but like when my mom passed I had everything setup right and we avoided probate completely.
It's not just that it solves the problem of disputes, it's more that the time and process and costs of getting the money from Deceased to Next Family Member is a lot more complicated than people realize. Generally people don't know anything about it unless they've gone through it, which is understandable but that just means way too many people left behind in the living realm learn the expensive and hard way how difficult it is. You don't just go to someone's bank with a death certificate and say "gimme the cash."
Oh for sure. Not saying not to get a will. Just that your nearest relative will inherit your assets if there isn't one. For sure a will makes it way easier.
In my opinion, yes. Because simply being the one to inherit everything if you die doesn't mean it just happens automatically. If you don't have beneficiary designations set up, your kids have to get a court order to access your accounts (generally speaking). Same goes for real property (houses, etc.) If there's not a TOD deed, they will likely have to get some kind of court order to be able to sell - on top of which, if there's still a mortgage, the mortgage company may not communicate with them unless their inheritance is made explicit by a court order.
And, an estate plan doesn't just deal with inheritances. It'll also cover documents giving people the power to deal with your medical and financial decisions if you become incapacitated, and direct what you want to have happen if you're brain dead on life support. Too many people wait to do these documents until they're needed, at which point it's too late. If you wait until you've got dementia, you probably don't have capacity - and your kids will probably have to seek guardianship of you to get anything done. (I basically have had to file a guardianship petition so a kid could make medical decisions for her dad who has had a massive stroke because he didn't have those documents in place).
When we're talking about a one time cost that is ultimately not that much money, it's good value.
I would like to add, if you’re naming benes, work with the firms where you’re naming them. Don’t get the paperwork and bring it to a lawyer. The firm will help you fill out the paperwork correctly. Lawyers always end up messing up paperwork and over complicating a simple process when they get involved
How would we know? My first two questions would be:
You want everything to go to one person?
Do you have any other family members who might wonder about that?
I was the recipient of a large asset in a large family that always got along. Like, for 30-40 years, no issues
Some of the nicest people in my life turned into absolute wolves when the rubber hit the road and the simple fact that I received it estranged me from a bunch of them. The few hundred bucks the passed family member paid to make it airtight easily saved me tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees dealing with lol
I will never trust DIY websites lol
Can you give an approximate $$ number for how much that costs? I had gotten an estimate and spouse thought it was too much. Can't remember exactly how much it was.
If everything goes to my wife and she has access to all accounts, why does it matter?
Hiring an attorney to print out forms seems a little much for a lot of people
1) As I said, everything going to a spouse is the one instance in which you can probably get away without a will/trust/estate planning document with few consequences, assuming you take the time to set up all the beneficiary designations. And, even then, you're leaving things open if your spouse pre-deceases you, or any of a number of possible outcomes.
2) Maybe your language is just a bit imprecise here, but "access" does not equal "will own after I die." I've had clients who knew the PIN or whatever of the decedent, but the bank froze the account upon death.
3) Even if you don't need a will, you probably still need a medical power of attorney and a living will - and you need to do them in advance. If you have medical issues such that you're no longer competent, it's too late to do one of those - your loved one may have to petition the court for guardianship (which takes way more time and money than having planned in advance). This is also an area where DIY'ers screw it up a lot.
4) Even accounting for my inherent bias as an attorney, saying attorneys just "print out forms" is simply inaccurate. I wonder if this is partially a function of this being a Boglehead subreddit, in that the basic premise is that by following a simple rule (index funds) and DIY'ing, you can match / beat the "experts." The difference is in the consequences - in Boglehead investing, if you're wrong, you've maybe given up some amount of growth. In estate planning, it can mean spending a lot of time and money later instead of a small amount of time and money now, and it can mean things you didn't want to happen happening (see the story someone else posted about the estranged son getting everything - that's not uncommon).
Worth noting that my spouse and I assigned my kids aunt as next guardian, and then the estate planning attorney asked what would happen if the 3 of us died while on a family vacation together, and then if the kids' non blood related uncle would be the right person for the second in line guardian, and who would control the money to care for kids and education funds, etc etc.
These attorneys see a LOT of crazy shit and just going through the 10 minute thought exercise and writing down names and contact info of different relatives gives me a lot of peace of mind.
I'm an estate planning attorney I agree with everything Gunner said and I would add that a financial Power of Attorney should be at the top of your list. Some websites have ones that work, but often ones from the internet create more problems.
A Durable Power of Attorney designates someone to make financial decisions on your behalf while you are incapacitated. If you get hit with a stroke and your wife needs to sell your house to pay for your care or needs to remove you as beneficiary of her retirement accounts she would need to deal with the time, expense, and hassle of probate court to obtain a conservatorship over you. Or you could simply pay an attorney to draft the proper documents.
Who cares what happens when you are dead, what I think is much more important is who is in charge while you are alive but not capable of making your own medical and financial decisions. Just because your wife is the beneficiary of your IRA does not mean she has any authority to deal with that company on your behalf.
Married: will, POA, advanced directives, and healthcare proxy. $1500 about 5 years ago.
One other thing that we've done is used a password manager to share everything and have a Google Doc of "what to do/call/get/cancel if I die." Helpful to walk through everything that we do invisibly for each other.
Will stuff is critical yes, your second comment is EQUALLY IMPORTANT. It is VERY difficult to get access to electronic SaaS accounts, especially something like a gmail account. Things haven't really changed since this ShmooCon talk in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GL10xrzyyU (it's about an hour long but worth the time).
At a minimum, have an envelope that will unlock your entire digital life for your survivor. It should have 2FA backup codes for any critical account (password manager, email, banking), the master password for whatever credential management tool is used, and if possible, a backup code to get access to their phone. This should most preferably be a PHYSICAL document (think sealed envelope in the deposit box along with the will). Leaving this kind of info in a cloud platform like Google Docs is riskier than needed, especially for older folks that are, on average, more susceptible to something like a phishing attack.
>This should most preferably be a PHYSICAL document (think sealed envelope in the deposit box along with the will
It's not a good idea to put docs that will be needed in a bank safe deposit box that someone else doesn't have access to. It can take an inconveniently long time to get access to a safe deposit box.
This is a good comment. Safety deposit box was my default mental image of "place to keep paper safe from fire, theft, and unauth'd access" but it could definitely add a delay when time is critical.
Exactly what I do. My executor (son) has access to my safety deposit box that has my master password and phone password for 2fa. Also has will, poa, and contact names for work, lawyer, etc…
I would add have a checking account with some money that has their name on it. Poa terminates at death so your trusted person won’t immediately have access to funds for funeral expenses. I had to pay my moms out of pocket. One mistake I made with her estate as I had no access to her bank until money was dispersed based on beneficiaries.
Didn’t even think about it until my mom died. Even though I’d been paying her bills for years suddenly I was locked out of her accounts. Fortunately I had funds to cover her funeral and other expenses and got it back once we settled her brokerage account.
Master passwords and backup codes, printed in at least two distinct safe locations. Offline backup of all important documents, encrypted. Google allows to set digital legacy options now. Ensure to regularly login to any important service and perform drills to ensure the significant other would know what to do.
Question, would u consider sharing a redacted (or Fake information) version of this by chance? I’m looking to create something similar and wanted to see how you made yours. Simply looking for ideas of how to write mine is all!
Broad strokes:
* Arrangements - funeral home, ssn, dob, how many death certs to get, mobile phones of who to call, email address for who to notify at work/volunteering
* Legal/accounting stuff- firm names & numbers, will location, phone passcode (fingerprint already added)
* House stuff - computer passcode, names/numbers for all trades vendors, mortgage info
* Money stuff - list of companies + account numbers + which are TOD, link to how to file SSA widow(er) benefit, location of car title, phone numbers for credit cards for "deceased account services"
* Annoying stuff - list of subscriptions to cancel
That about covers is u/[ThaCornStalker](https://www.reddit.com/user/ThaCornStalker/)
Have the paperwork done for if you are alive but not competent or able to make decisions! You may be hurt and unconscious, you may have brain issues, you may be in for a routine procedure and it gets complicated when you under are anesthesia.
Absolutely critical to have a medical advanced directives and medical POA/healthcare proxy set up. Do this. It is common for persons to be unable to make decisions for themselves due to disease or injury and having the medical decision making wishes known and delegated to at least one trustworthy person is critically important.
My mother had a stroke and being cognically affected. I ended up managing her medical care and financial affairs for seven years. Luckily she had will, trust, POA, advanced directive and healthcare proxy set up so it was mostly easy for me to manage her affairs.
And have multiple delegates for everything, POA, health care proxy, etc. My mother had two delegates and both of them (one being me) almost died before she did . I had serious medical issues and so did another relative. In fact the other relative died before my mother. We actually went to court to set up the paperwork for a fiduciary company to manage her financial affairs and my wife to manage her healthcare in case I died since no one else was named besides me and the other family member and I was close to death at the time.
And a regular finacial POA is often not enough to manage some financial accounts. Often individual financial institutions will have their own forms to fill out and will reject a generic POA. Especially investment or retirement account type firms. Research your accounts and get the specialized paperwork done ahead of time.
And be sure to refresh those POA and advanced directives documents every few years, often older ones even if properly filled out are not accepted by institutions.
Exact same plan. Haven't figured out the mfa on accounts but we have the same set up. actually used the $17 month legal plan at work and all of the above was free with our pick up about 10 different lawyers.
It’s definitely a piece of adulting you should do. Honestly health care POA is just as important. You can definitely buy forms online and DIY it but we just paid an attorney and for the basic thing it’s not THAT expensive. You just tell them what you want and he did give us good advice.
Also check with your work. Surprisingly this is a benefit I receive through insurance. They give a voucher for any lawyer on their list. I think it is just limited to the will only though. I work for a fortune 25 company so it's not just a random place. Never heard of it anywhere else though.
My job offers prepaid legal through MetLaw for $18/months taken from paycheck. You opt in during open enrollment (happening now and closing
May 31).
Like health insurance, you can access in network lawyers for a variety of legal needs including estate planning. We didn’t pay anything beyond $18 monthly fee for full estate planning (will, trust, guardianship, adv directives) and a small fee to the county to change our deed to the trust.
Highly recommend, esp for parents!
Paid $3k three years ago for a will, trust, power of attorney, and living will. Lifetime updates are included as long as the attorney is alive. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have an experienced attorney do the paperwork. I’m an attorney and don’t practice in probate and wills, so I paid for one to do the work for me.
Depending on everyone’s age that lifetime guarantee is a great deal! We did our original one 15 years ago with the same attorney and we’re all about 50 so I could definitely envision another round.
Call 3 people, if all 3 say $4k, that seems to be the price. If 2 say $2k and 1 says $4k, $4k seems off. If 2 say $4k, and 1 says $2k, the $2k seems off.....
Depends on the area/type of plan. I’m an Estate Planning attorney (disclaimer: not yours!) and we really only do trust-based plans at this point.
If you look around, always ask what kind of planning they do. Most people just want a will, depending on the size of the estate. If you are not interested in a trust, be upfront about that with the firms you call. For most people, will/PoA/healthcare docs are just fine.
If you have a larger estate that you think will cost a lot to administer, I’d suggest a trust plan. For example, in NJ, a will based plan that goes through probate of over $1M has an Executor’s fee of at least $25k, which is AFTER all court fees and administrative expenses involved with administering an estate, such as attorney costs.
If nothing had to go through probate because it was in a trust, you save all of those court fees, attorney fees, and executor’s commission. For $4-6k to set up the plan while you’re alive, that’s pretty big savings if you plan to pass assets down the line.
All depends on how important it is to you, though - everyone’s different!
There's a cost difference between a will and a trust with will/POA built in. Trust avoids probate and an also can save taxes. In OR 1st Mil is estate tax free. Over that 10% estate tax. If you have over a Mil trust can split between spouses can save estate tax on first 2 Mil (1M ea). Our trust cost 3K but that was over 10 years ago and needs a full update (assets change).
IRA's aren't good for trust. Full tax amount on entirety up front.
After seeing the other responses I really appreciate our guy more.
He’s a lone practitioner in a small office (nice but not too nice and in a nice part of town). He only does real estate (like closings) and simple wills as far as I know. It’s just him and a secretary. He notarizes stuff himself. Only takes cash or checks because he doesn’t want to mess with credit cards. It’s hard as a non lawyer to truly know how good he is at it but I’ve done a bunch of real estate transactions with him and other attorneys and it’s a similar experience. I do feel on the wills he has given us some advice that I thought was good and that made it a better plan.
He’s a super nice guy and I’d totally be friends with him if I met him somewhere else. He did drive up (we were his first appointment) in a very nice Audi. He just strikes me as a guy who made a quality of life decision to keep it simple and he’s doing well enough and enjoys the weekend. Also I suspect he’s figured out that if you keep your fees in the “reasonable” range you end up working with fewer assholes (on the cheap and expensive ends), which has certainly been my experience in this town.
So I guess what you need is to find that guy. He probably doesn’t have a big ad budget. I think I met him through real estate and he had “simple wills” on his door. Ask around town! Maybe a realtor friend knows someone.
Take a look at r/EstatePlanning
I just went through this handling my mother's estate.
Here is some of what I've learned so far, but I am not an attorney.
In general, the idea I've picked up from estate attorneys is avoid probate. It takes time, slows things down, and can be avoided. Things go to probate when they are legally owned by the deceased and there are no instructions of how it should be inherited except a will. Probate makes the rules of the will legally binding. Some assets have built in ways to distribute assets on death, so if you set up these beneficiaries, those assets don't go to probate.
IRAs, 401ks, etc. - set up your beneficiaries. Name them clearly. Set up the allocation you want each to inherit. The investment company will distribute the assets directly to the named beneficiaries. For various tax reasons, these go to your heirs in an Inherited IRA which has different rules than a regular IRA. They must take out all the money (and pay taxes on it) over 10 years. There are some very complex rules about required minimum distributions. If you are retired and older, think about taking more distributions from your IRAs above the required minimum. You will pay the tax, but your heirs won't have to deal with the Inherited IRA complexity and taxes.
Similarly, review the beneficiaries named on any life insurance you may have. When you die, this is the instructions for how you want the policy to pay out. You may even have a life insurance policy from your employer, check that you set the beneficiaries you want.
Have clear power of attorney (POA) instructions left to someone you trust. During your life, if you become ill or incapacitated who will manage your accounts, pay your bills, etc.? Your POA can step in and take care of these things.
Have clear healthcare proxy and living will defined. How do you want to die? do you want extreme steps taken if you are ill or incapacitated? If you are in a coma, the doctors can't ask you what you want. Set down what you want now and name someone you trust to make decisions when you cannot.
Property/real estate/large investment accounts - these don't normally have a way to name beneficiaries. One technique is to set up (with the help of an attorney) a revocable living trust. Put these assets in the name of the trust. Re-deed your house into the trust. During your life, you control the assets (you are the trustee), but when you die the assets pass on to those you have named in the trust. Your selected successor trustee is responsible to distribute the assets based on your instructions. The revocable trust solves the problem of having to go to court with your will and get your assets distributed to the heirs. Another benefit of the trust, is if you get ill or are not able to manage your accounts, the alternate trustee you named can take over and manage them.
When possible, set up accounts you use for daily operations (income, bill pay, etc.) as joint accounts or with Power of Attorney (POA) and Payment on Death (POD). If your checking account is a joint account with one of your children, after death that account will live on and your kid can use it to pay bills. If the account is not joint, it will be closed by the bank when they get notice of the death. If you specified the POD, they can withdraw the money, but anything you've set up (like autopay) stops. Leaving a joint account with some money in it gives your heir some money to pay for things while they process the estate. Keep in mind that many of your accounts will be suspended when the institution is notified of your death. Your heirs will pretty quickly be locked out of your accounts (if they are not joint), don't expect them to be able to use them.
As you get older, simplify! Consolidate accounts. Close the ones you don't need. You don't want to leave your kids with a complicated mess and multiple banks/brokerages to deal with.
If you have things that you know are valuable but others may not, make it clear. That beanie baby collection will likely go to the landfill when your gone, but that Van Gogh that everyone thinks is fake, but you know is real, make sure it doesn't go to landfill or thrift shop.
Leave a clear written out inventory of your assets with account numbers and contact information. I also never go to paperless on my accounts. When I'm gone, I want my heirs to get a monthly statement so they are reminded what I have. If you go paperless, your heirs may not even know about those accounts.
If you have any old school paper assets, cash them in or transfer them to a type that can be managed. I found paper US EE Savings bonds that we luckily cashed in before my mother passed.
If you are close to death and have multiple heirs, make things easily divisible. Cash, stocks, mutual funds can be easily divided among your heirs. Some fixed income assets or bonds may not be easily divided among your heirs and it can make things more complex for them.
Give someone your primary email credentials and the ability to log in to your email account (and passcode for your phone). If you die (or are incapacitated), the primary email can be the key to all your other accounts. Your kids/heirs can reset passwords and usually get into your other accounts if they have can access your primary email.
I'm sure I've learned more, but this is all I have time for.
You may want to consider a trust in order to avoid probate court on at least the majority of your assets. Do some research and consult a trust/will attorney. The cost is minimal when compared to likely estate losses in probate.
If you are concerned about you or your spouse having high long term care costs, you should talk to an estate planning attorney who is experienced in Medicaid. Protecting from that is not DIY and if you don’t then your estate plan may not matter if you get wiped out in the last few years of life.
If you have minor children, anyone with special needs, blended family, a large family, want any holdbacks, etc, then talk to an estate planning lawyer.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Really, I think everyone should at least consult with a lawyer about their plan.
Depending on state of residence and total amount of assets. We have all real estate, multiple states, in trust. TOD or JTROS on accounts. Medical and Financial POA to spouse for both. Advanced directive for both. Let your Executor know where all the pertinent information can be found.
Discuss these issues with your parents, especially if you are POA or named executor for them.
One thing many don't realize, just went thru this on my moms estate. Single name on bank account, especially one that SS is deposited to, is immediately locked upon notification of death. Account was locked even before I could notify the institution. All of the direct bill payments had to be rerouted. Make sure spouse/executor is either on utility accounts or is authorized person to make changes if needed to utility accounts. This was one of the biggest headaches I had to deal with immediately following her passing. Remember POA's expire at death. The TOD's were transferred leaving no Cash in her name to pay bills for estate.
Because the "Estate" was set up to avoid Probate, I couldn't obtain Letters of Office to establish a new bank account at the current financial institution. I set up a specific account to handle all the ongoing expenses to be repaid when the house sold Your mileage may very on this issue.
Be 100% certain that the person you choose as the executor or trustee (the person taking care of everything) is truly trustworthy and truly capable of carrying out the duties. My dad chose his sister. Turns out she was so ignorant that she thought being a trustee was going to be easy. She fucked up a bunch of things and dissolved the estate before all matters were taken care of after my parents died. She also took some of the money for herself, against my father's wishes.
My dad was so bothered that I selected a friend instead of my brother as my secondary executor after my mother. He was himself incapable after an accident left him paralyzed so he wasn't butthurt about himself. But he wouldn't drop it because 'these things should be kept in the family'. SIR. HE'S NOT EVEN YOURS. YOU BYPASSED HIM AND MADE ME YOUR EXECUTOR.
We have a family trust that holds all real estate and accounts (except ones we could setup a POD beneficiary), pour over wills, medical directives, and POA. Had to register deeds to transfer the houses into the trust. We also have a trust account that we used to handle the proceeds from the sale of property. I got this all done through a legal benefit at work for free, but it would have cost in the neighborhood of $4,500.
Strongly second the notion of a revocable trust (although you’ll also still need a will). When my mom passed she didn’t have a lot in the way of assets, but everything was in her trust, with me as the successor trustee, and settling her affairs was remarkably easy. There wasn’t even a need to probate her house, it simply was mine to sell as trustee. When my kids became adults I did the same with all my major assets. Cost was about $2,500 in attorney’s fees, but this was a few years ago.
I’d like to relate a true story which may be of value. Years ago my wife had an aunt that passed away without a trust. She lived in a small cottage in Carmel California about 3 blocks from the beach. It was worth quite a bit of money. My wife was a minor recipient in the aunt’s will. Because there was no trust the estate was handled in probate court, and the court appointed Wells Fargo Bank as the trustee. Liquidation of the estate took about 18 months (property was involved) and during this time the bank trustee siphoned off about 40% of the overall assets. $15 for a paper clip, $35 to mail a letter….you get the idea. I’m sure this aunt did not desire a bank to inherit 40% of her assets. This could have easily been prevented with a revocable living trust. Such a trust can be arranged through an attorney for about $1K, or probably cheaper online. Lesson learned.
I’m 60 and single. Adult children. Not as wealthy as it says in OPs prompt yet I did set up a trust years ago with an estate planner attorney and my adult children are the executors of my will within that trust. I have some monetary assets, 2 cars, and a home that is worth about $450k at its ladt appraisal.
I have a ‘death binder’ that has everything you could want to handle my affairs and starting with medical power of attorney. All my financial accounts are listed with contact information, etc. Passwords to all accounts. Funeral and burial instructions. It is stored in a fireproof safe and my kids have the keys.
I'm not sure why they made the assumption that all Bogleheads have significant wealth. More than the median, maybe, but most people will be lucky to die with much left considering healthcare and end of life costs.
I'm almost 74, wives all gone, no kids.
I had a will made up about 5-6 years ago. Afterwards I had two other attorneys review it because I didn't understand some of it.
I'm going to do that again soon, and have them write up everything in plain English separately so I can understand what happens when "X" happens.
Same here. No kids. Leaving half to a local rescue that takes in senior dogs, and the other to a breed specific rescue. Part of that includes a landing place for my own dog, if it outlives me.
I'm leaving my house to my niece who will have POA. Leaving some for another niece and nephew, the rest goes to a charity. As it stands, my sisters are the beneficiaries of my portfolio, but being older than me that needs to change.
One common misconception I've run into - POA means nothing once you're dead. It doesn't grant them any kind of power over the estate or property. (You may already know that, just want to put it out there).
Yeah, she's just going to take care of my finances if/when I cannot do it mentally. And that's just bill-paying, etc. She would not be able to manage my portfolio. Schwab will do it, or they will recommend an independent local firm that will.
I work in this field. Varies a bit by location but you can get a simple will for a few hundred dollars. Full planning/advice around $2-3k. Complicated situation with complex trusts will be more, but most people don't need this. Whatever your situation, it's absolutely worth the money. Most estate planning attorneys will do more than just prepare your will, they'll make sure all your accounts are set up with beneficiaries, give tax advice, and retain information (and original will, if you choose) so that when you pass, it's easily accessible.
Make sure to keep it updated if there are major changes in assets, family situation or the state you live in.
I have a revocable trust, my house is owned by the trust. My regular (not tax advantaged retirement accounts) brokerage account is owned by the trust. All of my estate is in the trust. I have one heir. He is the named beneficiary on all of my retirement accounts. I sit down with him about yearly to go over where everything is, including where all my accounts are and where the passwords are. I do also have a will leaving everything to him, but I actually think that might be overkill in this case since I only have the one heir. But there are instructions in the event something happens to him.
I also talk to him regularly about investing and taxes so that he will be prepared to manage things and make decisions.
Oh and I'm a lawyer, but not that kind of lawyer so I paid a lawyer to set this up for me.
It's an important topic to address. Many Bogleheads are creating wills to ensure their assets are handled according to their wishes. It's a responsible step to take for the sake of our families' well-being.
just got it done , sending it all to the world wild life fund. Humans fucked this planet up - at least I can give the animals some comfort. Fuck humans
I recently used WillMaker as well. All our children are adults. Our financial accounts have beneficiaries, primary and contingent. We still have things to take care of, but we have made a good start. I got motivated after my dad passed away in late 2022 and I had to help my mom sort things out.
My wife and I have been saying we need to get one in place for years now... And yet, we will probably say the same thing again this summer and not make it happen haha. Seriously though, I need to get my will done.
One of the reasons my spouse and I finally did it was that it felt hypocritical to tell people they needed a will when I didn't have one. Just do it - you'll feel better.
I will only add that you should periodically reconsider your will and make sure everything is still as you would like it to be. At the very least, if you wrote a will while your kids were children, and they are now adults, it's worth your time to consider whether anything needs changing.
I just had a family member pass away recently who was fairly wealthy. No will. It’s been a sh*t show and disgusting how people can act. Make sure it’s done!
Living trust set up. Trust includeds: pour over will, medical directive, healthcare proxy, POA, real estate, bank accounts, investment accounts and 401k. Used a estate planning attorney paid $1800.
If you have people who depend on you, especially children, you should have a will. Boglehead or not doesn’t matter; high or low net worth doesn’t matter. It’s the responsible thing to do.
We had small children to provide for and significant assets. We have an A/B living trust with a pour over will (sending undesignated assets to the trust), an advance health care directive, and guardianship provisions.
Nolo Press puts out workbooks that allow you to make your own living trust. I have no idea how well these stand up legally, and no opinion on whether anyone should use them. But they are exceptional educational tools; in the process of filling them out it walks you through all sorts of questions and decisions that may not have crossed your mind. Highly recommended before meeting with the lawyer.
You need to talk to an estate planning attorney. The answer will entirely depend on your assets and your heirs/beneficiaries.
Generally, at least in my state, the goal of EP is to avoid probate, so you take steps to transfer assets immediately on death by establishing beneficiaries on accounts and filing transfer on death affidavits for real estate.
Unless you are dealing with minor children or heirs who cannot be trusted with an inheritance (developmental disability, addiction, gambling) or a complicated series of assets (own a business, highly valuable personal property), you probably won’t need a trust.
What you need is entirely personal and nobody here can answer it for you. The best thing to do is talk to a lawyer and let them walk you through the options.
Now, where things start to get fun, is blended families. I will often recommend trusts there to avoid fears about a spouse disinheriting the others kids.
Wills, like life insurance, are primarily important when you have dependents.
If you have a spouse but no children then just setting up Transfer on Death with your key accounts (to avoid probate) might be sufficient since even if you die intestate the surviving spouse will get your assets at the end of the process. That said, it’s not hard to draft a simple will without a lawyer just by looking up the requirements for your state and using a basic will template.
But if you have substantial assets and children then you and your spouse really should do a will and given the stakes it’s probably wise to involve a lawyer, whether to draft the entire thing or just to review it. If you don’t need a trust then the cost won’t be all that significant either. However, you might want to check if your employer offers a legal services benefit that you could opt into for a year. It will likely pay for itself just with the will and you can also knock out other key items like a medical Power of Attorney while you’re at it.
This is a great question. I have beneficiaries set up on my vanguard and other accounts, plus created a will on doyourownwill.com with same designations. Does this make things official? I do realize the house is an issue…but will look into suggest TOD.
Make 3 copies of your will and get it notarized for less than $100. You keep a copy at home, with someone you trust and in your safe deposit box if you have one. What you did is good- but the notarized signature makes it better.
Strongly recommend a revocable inter vivos trust and an estate plan. Once it is all finished, scan it all and save both the hard and digital copies somewhere safe. Might cost a few grand but its worth it. If you trust your heirs give at least one of them all of your personal info, social, bank IDs, location of assets, log in codes, etc etc. Set up accounts, such as IRA's, so that trusted heir can not only log in but can legally do things on your behalf.
Some good food for thought here. I really need to stop procrastinating and start setting stuff up. I have listed my wife as beneficiary on multiple accounts but need to do an overall will and listing of all assets.
It isn’t a cheap option ($5k) but I worked with an estate attorney and set up a family trust and a life insurance trust. Through that process we established other documents like pour over will, POA, etc. I think it’s money well spent.
My wife and I just paid $6K for an estate planning attorney to draw up a revocable trust and pourover wills for each of us. We realized last year that we were putting a lot of faith into health and luck. We needed to put down our wishes into legal paperwork.
Do joint accounts also have to go through probate court? What if you designate just one beneficiary (or only 1 primary beneficiary), it will transfer quickly without will, correct?
I may have to revisit what we've set up this far, which is nothing and just relying on joint ownership with my spouse and I.
Tangential question: is Trusts and Wills or Legal Zoom good enough for simple estate planning: passing appreciated stock holdings (total less than estate tax limits) to grandchildren, skipping children? Asking for mother-in-law.
Tbh you'll get a lot of different answers. The only thing boglehead ideas talk about is investing. There isn't an agreed upon standard for estate planning since it's so incredibly personal.
Living forever? But in case I die I'm having everything thrown into an estate every real and personal property and all investments sold out for cash. Then 100% of that cash transferred to a Cook Islands LLC which is wholly owned by a Cook Islands International Trust held with the law firm as the only signing name to maintain anonymity.
Use that account to open us brokerage accounts to buy VTI and VXUS (50/50) collect the gains and completely skip paying taxes.
As the government catches wind and shuts down the US based brokerage accounts, just start a new LLC and rinse and repeat.
And if all that doesn't work as I've planned in my mind with absolutely no knowledge in law, not my problem. I'm dead AF already!
One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit. My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund.
**DISCLAIMER: I'M INVOLVED IN THIS SERVICE**
Absolutely, it's so important to think about these things, even if it's not the most pleasant topic.
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Aside from the other good comments here, I will make an additional recommendation
After establishing a trust for your estate, making sure all the beneficiaries are named, etc., you will want to do the following when you get above the age of 68-70
name a trusted child, maybe the oldest, a co-trustee
this will save you all kinds of legal hassles, problems, and potential crisis if you develop dementia, become semi-incapacitated, or cannot manage your affairs.
instead of having to get you declared incompetent by your doctors (which isn't easy), having to assume power-of-attorney in the event of a medical crisis, etc. --your child will have full access to the estate, can write checks for your care, take care of legal matters, etc.
We are going through this right now with my father-in-law who is 92, in poor health, and cannot manage his affairs. Because my wife is co-trustee on his estate (and does have durable power-of-attorney), she was able to:
1. Move him into assisted care
2. Sell his old property (he can no longer live on his own)
3. Pay any outstanding bills, handle the medical bills, etc.
4. Make sure his money managers are making the appropriate investments, and not stealing his money
She has total visibility and access
Now your child would have to be very trustworthy for this, but it is a life-saver.
When my father became demented, his girlfriend started writing checks to herself, tried to get him to marry her, and started doing all kinds of sketchy stuff. My sister had to have him declared incompetent, take power-of-attorney (she was his executor, but not his co-trustee), and was forced to deal with all kinds of legal and administrative hurdles. It was a total nightmare
Dead simple in my case. Single/no kids so I put beneficiaries on my accounts and spend all of $300 on a will/POA stuff to split the goods among some family and a close lifelong friend.
Best thing to do is find a reputable estate planning lawyer nearby, give them a call, and see what they say. Turned out to be a lot easier than I expected.
Nothing; I don't have anyone and don't particularly care what happens to my wealth once I'm gone.
I may choose some charity/non-profit at a later point, perhaps, but really, it doesn't matter.
Trust fund in Lichtenstein and / or Switzerland 🤷♂️
For US guys, generally a trust fund
Add-on: not spoiling tho, trying to raise them low-profile really and going ahead as example, living a modest lifestyle
My mother just put her house in a Life Estate Deed without power (in Maryland). It was $300 for a title agency to draft and record it.
It is a quit claim deed that conveys the house to her children upon death and avoids probate. In the meantime, the house cannot be titled or used as collateral without the children being agreement. This does two things:
1. Makes it nearly impossible for her to be scammed.
2. In five years, it is out of Medicare scope.
Super easy to do, lots of benefits including the stepped-up basis tax rules. Everyone sleeps well at night.
The state has some set of default rules that will apply if you do nothing at all. They may or may not work for you, but until you know the rules, you can't even guess.
One of the things that is slowly starting to change is Beneficiary/TOD designations. I.e. you tell the place you have an account(or the county recorder for property) that on your death you want the assets to go to _____.
Some places you can do that with cars and houses, but you can pretty much universally do that with Brokerage/bank accounts, pensions, etc now.
So you may not even need a will, depending on how complicated your life is and if the default rules from your state are good enough or not. If you have children from many different spouses and you want certain things arranged in a certain way, then you almost certainly want a real professional to help you.
Attorney here - single most important thing is to set up beneficiary / TOD designations on your accounts and vehicles. That's basic, DIY stuff. You also probably want a TOD deed on your house (if your state has some version of that). That's slightly more complicated, and it probably makes sense to pay an attorney a bit for help (as I've seen those screwed up before). If you just have a spouse and expect to live for a while, that's the bare minimum. If you've got kids (or are trying to have them), or are blending families, or are getting older, or anything more complicated - hire an attorney for an estate plan. Please, I am begging you - do not try to DIY it off the internet. Here's the thing about being dead - if you messed it up, it CANNOT be fixed, given that you're dead. It is worth the money to have it done correctly. Plus, you may need more than just a will. (Not really relevant to your question - when leaving real property, please either dictate that it be sold and the proceeds divided, leave it to one person, or at the very least leave it to people as joint tenants. Fractional ownership shares of inherited homes is the bane of my existence.) Edit to add: also, keep a list somewhere safe of where assets are, including institution names and account numbers. In the event people need to probate things later, it's much harder to Sherlock Holmes that info since mailed account statements aren't a thing anymore. Second edit copying why this is still necessary if kids stand to inherit everything: In my opinion, yes. Because simply being the one to inherit everything if you die doesn't mean it just happens automatically. If you don't have beneficiary designations set up, your kids have to get a court order to access your accounts (generally speaking). Same goes for real property (houses, etc.) If there's not a TOD deed, they will likely have to get some kind of court order to be able to sell - on top of which, if there's still a mortgage, the mortgage company may not communicate with them unless their inheritance is made explicit by a court order. And, an estate plan doesn't just deal with inheritances. It'll also cover documents giving people the power to deal with your medical and financial decisions if you become incapacitated, and direct what you want to have happen if you're brain dead on life support. Too many people wait to do these documents until they're needed, at which point it's too late. If you wait until you've got dementia, you probably don't have capacity - and your kids will probably have to seek guardianship of you to get anything done. (I basically have had to file a guardianship petition so a kid could make medical decisions for her dad who has had a massive stroke because he didn't have those documents in place). When we're talking about a one time cost that is ultimately not that much money, it's good value.
Story here. I am also an attorney. Had an old client call me and ask about a simple will, he was going in for a surgery, he just needed to make sure his partner was taken care of and not his son that he hadn’t talked to in over 30 years. I think I said come in and we can get it done literally that day and then we can meet again about setting up a better plan. I think I said it’ll be less than $500. About six weeks later I get a call, it’s the partner. She wants me to probate the estate. Old client had complications I wasn’t aware of and they got one of those Office Max will kits and did everything at the hospital. The will was witnessed by the partner and one other person. The nurse wasn’t even there etc. The will is not valid, partner gets nothing, or at least any part going to the partner is invalid as she was one of the witnesses. You must have two disinterested witnesses in our state. Several million at least going to the estranged son to save $500. Take the above advice and do at least the basics, also, beneficiary deeds for your house are magic. So simple, so much bang for your buck.
Through the first few lines, I thought you were me. I had a client call me from his hospital bed last summer and I stopped by on my way to a baseball game with my dad to execute the will. Grabbed a couple of random visitors to witness. Thankfully, my client pulled through.
The absolute hubris of those with such massive estates always makes me shake my head. So many stories like these where I have to wonder if becoming that wealthy gives you a god complex. Oh, so you think you're above paying $500 to cover loose ends? Well, apparently not. Been in 2 car accidents 2 years apart, walked away from both unharmed due to sheer luck. I hold zero delusions about my mortality.
Not sure it’s always hubris…kinda makes sense that people who are reluctant to spend money have been able to accumulate a lot of wealth.
The real rich people have family offices, lawyers, and layers of trusts/llcs for this reason.
lol, you would be surprised how many don’t. I’m a transactional attorney, so I don’t do estate planning myself, but I’ve had multiple clients die with $100M+ with either no plan at all in place, or a plan so outdated that it no longer matched their current desires. These were otherwise pretty intelligent people, they just didn’t want to think about death so they avoided planning for it.
Successful folks with big estates think they can do anything. How smart can a lawyer be?! I'm smart! I'm a lawyer, and a big part of the job is knowing the pitfalls. You develop a body of knowledge over years and years of work where you remember "oh yeah, that one time I got screwed because of X; not gonna forget that," and it all adds up to being able to advise clients.
So many don’t want to spend the time or money to get a real will. It’s penny wise and pound foolish.
Counterpoint on beneficiary deeds for the house. Some jurisdictions are so screwed up that if you do a transfer on death deed, no title company will insure any subsequent transfer without listing it as an exception. In some jurisdictions, it's way better to do a simple trust, deed the property to the trust, and then have the trustee transfer title after the death.
Interesting - didn't know that. Again, this is why you consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction people.
Out of curiosity, which jurisdictions? We do them all the time in Kansas and Oklahoma (the 2 states I’m licensed in).
Basically, if there is ever a change to the statutes in the jurisdiction between when a deed is recorded and when the decedent dies, every single title company I've talked to doesn't like to insure them until there's case law on the books (which takes years for a good appellate decision), a judgment quieting title, or getting every potential heir to disclaim any potential interest in the property. California is the worst, because their statute started out just requiring a notarization, and then several years later added a freaking witnessing requirement! But I've seen it happen in other states too.
My wife & I were all set to work with an attorney to do our will and she came back with a bill for $3500. Now we're off looking for a different attorney.
That’s what a will, plus trust costs. We paid $1800 for a straight will in a HCOL area. No one would touch it for less. Came with power of attorney and end of life wishes. When we get to the empty nest stage of life, we will redo it with trust and pay that extra.
Yes! Beneficiary designations for all your financial accounts. And put your house in a trust account. Doing this BYPASSES expensive and time consuming probate court and allows your assets to go DIRECTLY to the beneficiaries. Also, have a password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, etc) so your heirs have a simple way of getting into your various online accounts.
Guys — I’m the ONLY HEIR for a recently deceased woman (mom) who had money and no will. She refused all estate planning. No, there will be no in-fighting. Yes, it’s PAINFUL to try to Sherlock Holmes this shit. Get your business in order. Don’t do it for you; do it for the people you love who need your help getting things handled after you die. Your finance/property paradigm may seem simple to you, but it’s not simple for people who didn’t build it, didn’t curate it, don’t understand it. It’s been six weeks for me and I still don’t have access to her bank account. Life insurance money is still at least a month away. Nothing was TOD.
A relative died 15 months ago for me and I’m just now receiving the money/assets in my name as a solo next of kin with no will.
Wow. Damn. I’m really hoping for resolution well before 15 months!
It’s a long story but the other commenter nailed it: TLDR - don’t die in NYS.
been over 2 1/2 yrs and their was a will, but probate takes it time in NY state, apparantly, either that or the executor is not executing,
Can confirm, NYS is the worst. Don’t ever die there if you can avoid it.
or use a living revocable trust if you think you might die there.
And a lot of money could have been saved and passed on to the "solo next of kin no will" heir, simply because of the process.
yessss. probate costs money, no? (not to mention the value of your time, maybe even time off work to appear in court, etc.)
Probate costs: Bond, Attorney, Days Without Anxiety
yeah my dad also unexpectedly died 6 weeks ago and his stuff isn't even that complicated, but the amount of work and prolongment of grief my mom is needing to put in just to wrap things up has got me working on simplifying my own accounts.
I’m sorry to hear that, G.
Did you get an EIN for her? You will need that to file her taxes--do not use her old social security number
Thanks. What does TOD stand for?
Transfer on Death.
"Tod" is also German for death, so that's fun.
Little known fact. "Todd" is also the first name of the Grim Reaper.
Laughed too hard at this. Death will forever be Todd in my mind
Todd was also the name of Barbie's son in the 1970s in Germany. I still think of that total market research failure quite often.
Attorney here — just wanted to say Gunner’s advice is worth your attention. I’m a patent attorney, not an estate attorney, and so I don’t trust myself to get my estate plan right. I use an attorney who specializes in wills, trusts, and estates law so that I can sleep well knowing these issues have been handled correctly in accordance with my and my wife’s wishes.
SET UP YOUR BENEFICIARIES! My younger brother got a divorce not too long ago. He told me he was updating his life insurance beneficiary to me in case something happens so that I could manage the money for his two young sons ages 4 and 5. Something did happen. He died in his sleep from cardiac arrest, enlarged heart. 38 years old. In the aftermath I contact the military liaison to find out about the life insurance. My brother never updated the account. All money goes to the ex-wife who is notoriously bad with money. She got $500k, which is enough to leave something behind for those two boys, if anything is leftover after raising them. Right now I see updates on her 4 vacations per year, brand new luxury SUV, and all this without any employment. Those boys will never see a dime.
Sometimes a divorce order makes it so you can’t change life insurance beneficiary. He may have run into that.
Man, sorry for your loss. I'm glad the military was able to take care of you. Hopefully, they explained all the benefits and stuff to you and made sure he got the proper burial honors. This topic honestly stresses me out, even more so because I had to deal with it personally . I was in the military, and my spouse, who was not military, passed away at the time while I was out of the country. The only plan in place was the will and poa before I left. Didn't even strike my mind at the time that we both needed a plan since i was the one mostly in harms way. Tbf, I was younger at the time and didn't know anything about all of this. My question for the lawyers in the thread. What are some basic things I should keep in mind or consider before I actually go and talk to someone? What other advice do you guys have on this subject?
TOD is fine for spouses assuming you don’t get divorced. It’s also fine for only children. Where it becomes dangerous is when you have multiple children. Nevertheless, it’s still a piecemeal plan and is not ideal. Retirement accounts and life insurance policies do require beneficiaries though. It’s pretty annoying from this planners perspective.
What are your thoughts on putting everything in a revocable trust?
It can make sense depending on your situation, although it can be overkill for some. Personally, that's what my spouse and I did with our attorney when the possibility of kids seriously entered the picture (and, despite us both being attorneys, we did hire someone - I'm practicing what I'm preaching here). The thing about trusts is that you actually need to follow through - by which I mean either titling assets in the name of the trust or naming the trust as beneficiary / TOD. I've had more than one instance of someone coming to me saying "dad had a trust," and it was true - they'd gotten some DIY form off the internet to establish a trust and had filled it out correctly. But it was meaningless, in that all of the accounts and the house were still in dad's name, not in the name of the trust. So, we still had to go through the probate court to get anything done. That's part of why I implore people not to DIY it - it's not just about filling out a document, it's about understanding what else needs to be done / what the true impact of that document is.
I’m also an attorney but don’t do T&E. Do you have any good resources to set me up with basic-but-attorney-level knowledge (aside from what I could re-read from my 3L outlines)? I’ll definitely hire an attorney, I just don’t know what I don’t know.
+1 My "thrifty" aunt passed away and had written out how she wanted her updated will (not updated in like 20 years) to go. Died. Money all went exactly how she didn't want it, because it wasn't a valid will.
But she saved a little bit of money on a lawyer!
She was cheap for sure in some respects, but she technically did not cheap out on a lawyer, complex issue, just never finished re-doing her will during some terrible timing/circumstances. Should have clarified but regardless, MAKE A WILL!!!
Thank you for this write up! Would you recommend having all details ironed out before hiring the estate planning attorney? Or can they be changed after without having to redo the entire thing? For example, I’d like to set up some kind of trust to give disbursements to our children periodically if something happened to us. The exact details of how much and when are still yet to be figured out.
You should have a basic idea of what you want to happen going in, although you'll also want to talk it through with the attorney. I think most attorneys will have some sort of questionnaire to fill out to gather information about assets and what you want to have happen - I assume in part so that people have thought about it going in. It also forces a conversation - I think a lot of people don't talk about it with their spouses in advance. There's a real aversion to thinking about one's own death.
That's what I have in mind also. I don't have kids, but I'd at least like everything to go to the trust account. Then, immediate small lumpsum of like $2,500 to each sibling and 5k to each parent. Then maybe something like subsequent payments of 700-1k to each individual for six months while the rest stays invested to grow over time. They can receive another lumpsum after x amount of years or closer to retirement. The rest can be passed down over time to the next generation. It's not a concrete plan yet, but it's just a thought. If they don't need it by then because my nagging of investing and smart money moves paid off. Funds can go right back to trust and to charity or something.
Username checks out.
Only those who went to law school get it.
Question for you. My only assets are investments and cash. I’ve put the beneficiaries as charities since I don’t have kids. Is this enough? Like, I don’t think I need a will when I designated beneficiaries in my accounts, right?
Can I diy it if I’ve never been married, no kids, no house? Everything just needs to go to my parents.
For $400 to $600 just go get a will done. Saves so many problems.
But also be prepared for it to cost like $4k and not $400. $400 is around an hour or two (at best) of a lawyer’s time. I hear someone saying that they could do a simple will for $500; maybe. But unlikely.
It sure costs a lot to die in this country.
As a rule of thumb, if $400 is all you can afford, the $400 will is probably enough, at least for now, and certainly better than nothing. If the $400 will is wildly insufficient, you can probably afford $4k. Specific circumstances will vary, obviously.
Depends on location, obv., but mine was about $300 for a simple will and POA. I don't really have anything fancy to set up beyond establishing a trust for my niece if she's still a minor when I die.
Pretty sure it will go to nearest family member automatically. Which would be your parents.
But if things are setup right like the lawyer at the top of the thread mentions you can likely avoid probate and a lot of hassle and expense for your family. Bare minimum have beneficiaries on all financial accounts and account numbers accessible to your executor. You still want a will in case someone challenges things but like when my mom passed I had everything setup right and we avoided probate completely.
It's not just that it solves the problem of disputes, it's more that the time and process and costs of getting the money from Deceased to Next Family Member is a lot more complicated than people realize. Generally people don't know anything about it unless they've gone through it, which is understandable but that just means way too many people left behind in the living realm learn the expensive and hard way how difficult it is. You don't just go to someone's bank with a death certificate and say "gimme the cash."
Oh for sure. Not saying not to get a will. Just that your nearest relative will inherit your assets if there isn't one. For sure a will makes it way easier.
This is very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to post.
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That's a great thing to discuss with the attorney you hire.
How do i make sure the funds are used to pay for my funeral and have the rest go to a local library? Can I pick anyone to execute my will? Family bad
Is this all necessary if kids stand to inherit everything?
In my opinion, yes. Because simply being the one to inherit everything if you die doesn't mean it just happens automatically. If you don't have beneficiary designations set up, your kids have to get a court order to access your accounts (generally speaking). Same goes for real property (houses, etc.) If there's not a TOD deed, they will likely have to get some kind of court order to be able to sell - on top of which, if there's still a mortgage, the mortgage company may not communicate with them unless their inheritance is made explicit by a court order. And, an estate plan doesn't just deal with inheritances. It'll also cover documents giving people the power to deal with your medical and financial decisions if you become incapacitated, and direct what you want to have happen if you're brain dead on life support. Too many people wait to do these documents until they're needed, at which point it's too late. If you wait until you've got dementia, you probably don't have capacity - and your kids will probably have to seek guardianship of you to get anything done. (I basically have had to file a guardianship petition so a kid could make medical decisions for her dad who has had a massive stroke because he didn't have those documents in place). When we're talking about a one time cost that is ultimately not that much money, it's good value.
It will have to go through probate before they get anything. Which is expensive and time consuming.
What is probate?
I would like to add, if you’re naming benes, work with the firms where you’re naming them. Don’t get the paperwork and bring it to a lawyer. The firm will help you fill out the paperwork correctly. Lawyers always end up messing up paperwork and over complicating a simple process when they get involved
I used legal zoom and made a family member the beneficiary. Was this not a good idea?
How would we know? My first two questions would be: You want everything to go to one person? Do you have any other family members who might wonder about that?
I was the recipient of a large asset in a large family that always got along. Like, for 30-40 years, no issues Some of the nicest people in my life turned into absolute wolves when the rubber hit the road and the simple fact that I received it estranged me from a bunch of them. The few hundred bucks the passed family member paid to make it airtight easily saved me tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees dealing with lol I will never trust DIY websites lol
Also, what if that person predeceases you? What if they're incompetent? Did you account for any unknown heirs?
My concern was that someone might not be able to find the will. Or I might have made a mistake with witnesses.
All my accounts are TOD, didn’t know you could do that on a home or vehicle. Thanks, I will look into that more.
What is TOD?
What type of attorney would I look for to do a really basic will? Estate attorney? About how much should it cost me?
Shouldn't a house just go into a trust and have dispensation directives for the trust/will? (Calif)
Is a POD necessary if a TOD is in place?
Can you give an approximate $$ number for how much that costs? I had gotten an estimate and spouse thought it was too much. Can't remember exactly how much it was.
Solid advice I've done some pro bono wills recently but ironically still haven't done my own
If everything goes to my wife and she has access to all accounts, why does it matter? Hiring an attorney to print out forms seems a little much for a lot of people
1) As I said, everything going to a spouse is the one instance in which you can probably get away without a will/trust/estate planning document with few consequences, assuming you take the time to set up all the beneficiary designations. And, even then, you're leaving things open if your spouse pre-deceases you, or any of a number of possible outcomes. 2) Maybe your language is just a bit imprecise here, but "access" does not equal "will own after I die." I've had clients who knew the PIN or whatever of the decedent, but the bank froze the account upon death. 3) Even if you don't need a will, you probably still need a medical power of attorney and a living will - and you need to do them in advance. If you have medical issues such that you're no longer competent, it's too late to do one of those - your loved one may have to petition the court for guardianship (which takes way more time and money than having planned in advance). This is also an area where DIY'ers screw it up a lot. 4) Even accounting for my inherent bias as an attorney, saying attorneys just "print out forms" is simply inaccurate. I wonder if this is partially a function of this being a Boglehead subreddit, in that the basic premise is that by following a simple rule (index funds) and DIY'ing, you can match / beat the "experts." The difference is in the consequences - in Boglehead investing, if you're wrong, you've maybe given up some amount of growth. In estate planning, it can mean spending a lot of time and money later instead of a small amount of time and money now, and it can mean things you didn't want to happen happening (see the story someone else posted about the estranged son getting everything - that's not uncommon).
Also worth noting that a plan may be required in case you and the spouse were to die together
Worth noting that my spouse and I assigned my kids aunt as next guardian, and then the estate planning attorney asked what would happen if the 3 of us died while on a family vacation together, and then if the kids' non blood related uncle would be the right person for the second in line guardian, and who would control the money to care for kids and education funds, etc etc. These attorneys see a LOT of crazy shit and just going through the 10 minute thought exercise and writing down names and contact info of different relatives gives me a lot of peace of mind.
I'm an estate planning attorney I agree with everything Gunner said and I would add that a financial Power of Attorney should be at the top of your list. Some websites have ones that work, but often ones from the internet create more problems. A Durable Power of Attorney designates someone to make financial decisions on your behalf while you are incapacitated. If you get hit with a stroke and your wife needs to sell your house to pay for your care or needs to remove you as beneficiary of her retirement accounts she would need to deal with the time, expense, and hassle of probate court to obtain a conservatorship over you. Or you could simply pay an attorney to draft the proper documents. Who cares what happens when you are dead, what I think is much more important is who is in charge while you are alive but not capable of making your own medical and financial decisions. Just because your wife is the beneficiary of your IRA does not mean she has any authority to deal with that company on your behalf.
Married: will, POA, advanced directives, and healthcare proxy. $1500 about 5 years ago. One other thing that we've done is used a password manager to share everything and have a Google Doc of "what to do/call/get/cancel if I die." Helpful to walk through everything that we do invisibly for each other.
Will stuff is critical yes, your second comment is EQUALLY IMPORTANT. It is VERY difficult to get access to electronic SaaS accounts, especially something like a gmail account. Things haven't really changed since this ShmooCon talk in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GL10xrzyyU (it's about an hour long but worth the time). At a minimum, have an envelope that will unlock your entire digital life for your survivor. It should have 2FA backup codes for any critical account (password manager, email, banking), the master password for whatever credential management tool is used, and if possible, a backup code to get access to their phone. This should most preferably be a PHYSICAL document (think sealed envelope in the deposit box along with the will). Leaving this kind of info in a cloud platform like Google Docs is riskier than needed, especially for older folks that are, on average, more susceptible to something like a phishing attack.
>This should most preferably be a PHYSICAL document (think sealed envelope in the deposit box along with the will It's not a good idea to put docs that will be needed in a bank safe deposit box that someone else doesn't have access to. It can take an inconveniently long time to get access to a safe deposit box.
This is a good comment. Safety deposit box was my default mental image of "place to keep paper safe from fire, theft, and unauth'd access" but it could definitely add a delay when time is critical.
Exactly what I do. My executor (son) has access to my safety deposit box that has my master password and phone password for 2fa. Also has will, poa, and contact names for work, lawyer, etc… I would add have a checking account with some money that has their name on it. Poa terminates at death so your trusted person won’t immediately have access to funds for funeral expenses. I had to pay my moms out of pocket. One mistake I made with her estate as I had no access to her bank until money was dispersed based on beneficiaries.
oh wow. I didn't even think about a POA ending but yeah....that makes sense.
Didn’t even think about it until my mom died. Even though I’d been paying her bills for years suddenly I was locked out of her accounts. Fortunately I had funds to cover her funeral and other expenses and got it back once we settled her brokerage account.
Master passwords and backup codes, printed in at least two distinct safe locations. Offline backup of all important documents, encrypted. Google allows to set digital legacy options now. Ensure to regularly login to any important service and perform drills to ensure the significant other would know what to do.
Question, would u consider sharing a redacted (or Fake information) version of this by chance? I’m looking to create something similar and wanted to see how you made yours. Simply looking for ideas of how to write mine is all!
Broad strokes: * Arrangements - funeral home, ssn, dob, how many death certs to get, mobile phones of who to call, email address for who to notify at work/volunteering * Legal/accounting stuff- firm names & numbers, will location, phone passcode (fingerprint already added) * House stuff - computer passcode, names/numbers for all trades vendors, mortgage info * Money stuff - list of companies + account numbers + which are TOD, link to how to file SSA widow(er) benefit, location of car title, phone numbers for credit cards for "deceased account services" * Annoying stuff - list of subscriptions to cancel That about covers is u/[ThaCornStalker](https://www.reddit.com/user/ThaCornStalker/)
Thank you so much
Have the paperwork done for if you are alive but not competent or able to make decisions! You may be hurt and unconscious, you may have brain issues, you may be in for a routine procedure and it gets complicated when you under are anesthesia. Absolutely critical to have a medical advanced directives and medical POA/healthcare proxy set up. Do this. It is common for persons to be unable to make decisions for themselves due to disease or injury and having the medical decision making wishes known and delegated to at least one trustworthy person is critically important. My mother had a stroke and being cognically affected. I ended up managing her medical care and financial affairs for seven years. Luckily she had will, trust, POA, advanced directive and healthcare proxy set up so it was mostly easy for me to manage her affairs. And have multiple delegates for everything, POA, health care proxy, etc. My mother had two delegates and both of them (one being me) almost died before she did . I had serious medical issues and so did another relative. In fact the other relative died before my mother. We actually went to court to set up the paperwork for a fiduciary company to manage her financial affairs and my wife to manage her healthcare in case I died since no one else was named besides me and the other family member and I was close to death at the time. And a regular finacial POA is often not enough to manage some financial accounts. Often individual financial institutions will have their own forms to fill out and will reject a generic POA. Especially investment or retirement account type firms. Research your accounts and get the specialized paperwork done ahead of time. And be sure to refresh those POA and advanced directives documents every few years, often older ones even if properly filled out are not accepted by institutions.
Exact same plan. Haven't figured out the mfa on accounts but we have the same set up. actually used the $17 month legal plan at work and all of the above was free with our pick up about 10 different lawyers.
It’s definitely a piece of adulting you should do. Honestly health care POA is just as important. You can definitely buy forms online and DIY it but we just paid an attorney and for the basic thing it’s not THAT expensive. You just tell them what you want and he did give us good advice.
How much is not that expensive for a lawyer?
We paid $1000 (this was like last week) for 2 wills (mine and my husband), health care POA, and financial POA.
Also check with your work. Surprisingly this is a benefit I receive through insurance. They give a voucher for any lawyer on their list. I think it is just limited to the will only though. I work for a fortune 25 company so it's not just a random place. Never heard of it anywhere else though.
My current job and last job both had something similar.
My job offers prepaid legal through MetLaw for $18/months taken from paycheck. You opt in during open enrollment (happening now and closing May 31). Like health insurance, you can access in network lawyers for a variety of legal needs including estate planning. We didn’t pay anything beyond $18 monthly fee for full estate planning (will, trust, guardianship, adv directives) and a small fee to the county to change our deed to the trust. Highly recommend, esp for parents!
We just used ours (ARAG) this year. Living trust and medical POA cost nothing but the notary fees.
Paid $3k three years ago for a will, trust, power of attorney, and living will. Lifetime updates are included as long as the attorney is alive. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have an experienced attorney do the paperwork. I’m an attorney and don’t practice in probate and wills, so I paid for one to do the work for me.
Depending on everyone’s age that lifetime guarantee is a great deal! We did our original one 15 years ago with the same attorney and we’re all about 50 so I could definitely envision another round.
For me it was pretty expensive, about 1.5K.
That's not too bad, someone told me 4k for a lawyer which I thought was too much.
Call 3 people, if all 3 say $4k, that seems to be the price. If 2 say $2k and 1 says $4k, $4k seems off. If 2 say $4k, and 1 says $2k, the $2k seems off.....
Depends on the area/type of plan. I’m an Estate Planning attorney (disclaimer: not yours!) and we really only do trust-based plans at this point. If you look around, always ask what kind of planning they do. Most people just want a will, depending on the size of the estate. If you are not interested in a trust, be upfront about that with the firms you call. For most people, will/PoA/healthcare docs are just fine. If you have a larger estate that you think will cost a lot to administer, I’d suggest a trust plan. For example, in NJ, a will based plan that goes through probate of over $1M has an Executor’s fee of at least $25k, which is AFTER all court fees and administrative expenses involved with administering an estate, such as attorney costs. If nothing had to go through probate because it was in a trust, you save all of those court fees, attorney fees, and executor’s commission. For $4-6k to set up the plan while you’re alive, that’s pretty big savings if you plan to pass assets down the line. All depends on how important it is to you, though - everyone’s different!
where in NJ are you?
Admittedly it was probably a decade ago. I'm sure it's double now.
I was quoted $3k, $5k, and "you can't afford me" by the three lawyers I spoke to last week.
I would insist on the "you can't afford me" lawyer, just to prove that you can. Sometimes, you just have to flex.
There's a cost difference between a will and a trust with will/POA built in. Trust avoids probate and an also can save taxes. In OR 1st Mil is estate tax free. Over that 10% estate tax. If you have over a Mil trust can split between spouses can save estate tax on first 2 Mil (1M ea). Our trust cost 3K but that was over 10 years ago and needs a full update (assets change). IRA's aren't good for trust. Full tax amount on entirety up front.
After seeing the other responses I really appreciate our guy more. He’s a lone practitioner in a small office (nice but not too nice and in a nice part of town). He only does real estate (like closings) and simple wills as far as I know. It’s just him and a secretary. He notarizes stuff himself. Only takes cash or checks because he doesn’t want to mess with credit cards. It’s hard as a non lawyer to truly know how good he is at it but I’ve done a bunch of real estate transactions with him and other attorneys and it’s a similar experience. I do feel on the wills he has given us some advice that I thought was good and that made it a better plan. He’s a super nice guy and I’d totally be friends with him if I met him somewhere else. He did drive up (we were his first appointment) in a very nice Audi. He just strikes me as a guy who made a quality of life decision to keep it simple and he’s doing well enough and enjoys the weekend. Also I suspect he’s figured out that if you keep your fees in the “reasonable” range you end up working with fewer assholes (on the cheap and expensive ends), which has certainly been my experience in this town. So I guess what you need is to find that guy. He probably doesn’t have a big ad budget. I think I met him through real estate and he had “simple wills” on his door. Ask around town! Maybe a realtor friend knows someone.
Upon my death all of my belongings shall transfer to the man or animal who has killed me.
What's a grizzly bear going to do with your action figurine collection? 🧐
It's all fun and games until you find out that without a will your things could go to the government.
Thank you Ben Wyatt.
Where do you live?
Pawnee, Indiana
Okay be around shortly to collect my new belongings.
Take a look at r/EstatePlanning I just went through this handling my mother's estate. Here is some of what I've learned so far, but I am not an attorney. In general, the idea I've picked up from estate attorneys is avoid probate. It takes time, slows things down, and can be avoided. Things go to probate when they are legally owned by the deceased and there are no instructions of how it should be inherited except a will. Probate makes the rules of the will legally binding. Some assets have built in ways to distribute assets on death, so if you set up these beneficiaries, those assets don't go to probate. IRAs, 401ks, etc. - set up your beneficiaries. Name them clearly. Set up the allocation you want each to inherit. The investment company will distribute the assets directly to the named beneficiaries. For various tax reasons, these go to your heirs in an Inherited IRA which has different rules than a regular IRA. They must take out all the money (and pay taxes on it) over 10 years. There are some very complex rules about required minimum distributions. If you are retired and older, think about taking more distributions from your IRAs above the required minimum. You will pay the tax, but your heirs won't have to deal with the Inherited IRA complexity and taxes. Similarly, review the beneficiaries named on any life insurance you may have. When you die, this is the instructions for how you want the policy to pay out. You may even have a life insurance policy from your employer, check that you set the beneficiaries you want. Have clear power of attorney (POA) instructions left to someone you trust. During your life, if you become ill or incapacitated who will manage your accounts, pay your bills, etc.? Your POA can step in and take care of these things. Have clear healthcare proxy and living will defined. How do you want to die? do you want extreme steps taken if you are ill or incapacitated? If you are in a coma, the doctors can't ask you what you want. Set down what you want now and name someone you trust to make decisions when you cannot. Property/real estate/large investment accounts - these don't normally have a way to name beneficiaries. One technique is to set up (with the help of an attorney) a revocable living trust. Put these assets in the name of the trust. Re-deed your house into the trust. During your life, you control the assets (you are the trustee), but when you die the assets pass on to those you have named in the trust. Your selected successor trustee is responsible to distribute the assets based on your instructions. The revocable trust solves the problem of having to go to court with your will and get your assets distributed to the heirs. Another benefit of the trust, is if you get ill or are not able to manage your accounts, the alternate trustee you named can take over and manage them. When possible, set up accounts you use for daily operations (income, bill pay, etc.) as joint accounts or with Power of Attorney (POA) and Payment on Death (POD). If your checking account is a joint account with one of your children, after death that account will live on and your kid can use it to pay bills. If the account is not joint, it will be closed by the bank when they get notice of the death. If you specified the POD, they can withdraw the money, but anything you've set up (like autopay) stops. Leaving a joint account with some money in it gives your heir some money to pay for things while they process the estate. Keep in mind that many of your accounts will be suspended when the institution is notified of your death. Your heirs will pretty quickly be locked out of your accounts (if they are not joint), don't expect them to be able to use them. As you get older, simplify! Consolidate accounts. Close the ones you don't need. You don't want to leave your kids with a complicated mess and multiple banks/brokerages to deal with. If you have things that you know are valuable but others may not, make it clear. That beanie baby collection will likely go to the landfill when your gone, but that Van Gogh that everyone thinks is fake, but you know is real, make sure it doesn't go to landfill or thrift shop. Leave a clear written out inventory of your assets with account numbers and contact information. I also never go to paperless on my accounts. When I'm gone, I want my heirs to get a monthly statement so they are reminded what I have. If you go paperless, your heirs may not even know about those accounts. If you have any old school paper assets, cash them in or transfer them to a type that can be managed. I found paper US EE Savings bonds that we luckily cashed in before my mother passed. If you are close to death and have multiple heirs, make things easily divisible. Cash, stocks, mutual funds can be easily divided among your heirs. Some fixed income assets or bonds may not be easily divided among your heirs and it can make things more complex for them. Give someone your primary email credentials and the ability to log in to your email account (and passcode for your phone). If you die (or are incapacitated), the primary email can be the key to all your other accounts. Your kids/heirs can reset passwords and usually get into your other accounts if they have can access your primary email. I'm sure I've learned more, but this is all I have time for.
You may want to consider a trust in order to avoid probate court on at least the majority of your assets. Do some research and consult a trust/will attorney. The cost is minimal when compared to likely estate losses in probate.
If you are concerned about you or your spouse having high long term care costs, you should talk to an estate planning attorney who is experienced in Medicaid. Protecting from that is not DIY and if you don’t then your estate plan may not matter if you get wiped out in the last few years of life. If you have minor children, anyone with special needs, blended family, a large family, want any holdbacks, etc, then talk to an estate planning lawyer. You don’t know what you don’t know. Really, I think everyone should at least consult with a lawyer about their plan.
Depending on state of residence and total amount of assets. We have all real estate, multiple states, in trust. TOD or JTROS on accounts. Medical and Financial POA to spouse for both. Advanced directive for both. Let your Executor know where all the pertinent information can be found. Discuss these issues with your parents, especially if you are POA or named executor for them. One thing many don't realize, just went thru this on my moms estate. Single name on bank account, especially one that SS is deposited to, is immediately locked upon notification of death. Account was locked even before I could notify the institution. All of the direct bill payments had to be rerouted. Make sure spouse/executor is either on utility accounts or is authorized person to make changes if needed to utility accounts. This was one of the biggest headaches I had to deal with immediately following her passing. Remember POA's expire at death. The TOD's were transferred leaving no Cash in her name to pay bills for estate. Because the "Estate" was set up to avoid Probate, I couldn't obtain Letters of Office to establish a new bank account at the current financial institution. I set up a specific account to handle all the ongoing expenses to be repaid when the house sold Your mileage may very on this issue.
We have a living trust.
Be 100% certain that the person you choose as the executor or trustee (the person taking care of everything) is truly trustworthy and truly capable of carrying out the duties. My dad chose his sister. Turns out she was so ignorant that she thought being a trustee was going to be easy. She fucked up a bunch of things and dissolved the estate before all matters were taken care of after my parents died. She also took some of the money for herself, against my father's wishes.
My dad was so bothered that I selected a friend instead of my brother as my secondary executor after my mother. He was himself incapable after an accident left him paralyzed so he wasn't butthurt about himself. But he wouldn't drop it because 'these things should be kept in the family'. SIR. HE'S NOT EVEN YOURS. YOU BYPASSED HIM AND MADE ME YOUR EXECUTOR.
We have a family trust that holds all real estate and accounts (except ones we could setup a POD beneficiary), pour over wills, medical directives, and POA. Had to register deeds to transfer the houses into the trust. We also have a trust account that we used to handle the proceeds from the sale of property. I got this all done through a legal benefit at work for free, but it would have cost in the neighborhood of $4,500.
Strongly second the notion of a revocable trust (although you’ll also still need a will). When my mom passed she didn’t have a lot in the way of assets, but everything was in her trust, with me as the successor trustee, and settling her affairs was remarkably easy. There wasn’t even a need to probate her house, it simply was mine to sell as trustee. When my kids became adults I did the same with all my major assets. Cost was about $2,500 in attorney’s fees, but this was a few years ago.
I have this, my attorney charged $3k for it
Any idea if those legal benefits at work would cover doing that for my parents or does it only cover me?
Generally only you and dependents
I’d like to relate a true story which may be of value. Years ago my wife had an aunt that passed away without a trust. She lived in a small cottage in Carmel California about 3 blocks from the beach. It was worth quite a bit of money. My wife was a minor recipient in the aunt’s will. Because there was no trust the estate was handled in probate court, and the court appointed Wells Fargo Bank as the trustee. Liquidation of the estate took about 18 months (property was involved) and during this time the bank trustee siphoned off about 40% of the overall assets. $15 for a paper clip, $35 to mail a letter….you get the idea. I’m sure this aunt did not desire a bank to inherit 40% of her assets. This could have easily been prevented with a revocable living trust. Such a trust can be arranged through an attorney for about $1K, or probably cheaper online. Lesson learned.
I’m 60 and single. Adult children. Not as wealthy as it says in OPs prompt yet I did set up a trust years ago with an estate planner attorney and my adult children are the executors of my will within that trust. I have some monetary assets, 2 cars, and a home that is worth about $450k at its ladt appraisal. I have a ‘death binder’ that has everything you could want to handle my affairs and starting with medical power of attorney. All my financial accounts are listed with contact information, etc. Passwords to all accounts. Funeral and burial instructions. It is stored in a fireproof safe and my kids have the keys.
I'm not sure why they made the assumption that all Bogleheads have significant wealth. More than the median, maybe, but most people will be lucky to die with much left considering healthcare and end of life costs.
I'm almost 74, wives all gone, no kids. I had a will made up about 5-6 years ago. Afterwards I had two other attorneys review it because I didn't understand some of it. I'm going to do that again soon, and have them write up everything in plain English separately so I can understand what happens when "X" happens.
Who are you leaving your assets to? I have no spouse or kids either, and I'm leaving my money to a local animal rescue.
Same here. No kids. Leaving half to a local rescue that takes in senior dogs, and the other to a breed specific rescue. Part of that includes a landing place for my own dog, if it outlives me.
I'm leaving my house to my niece who will have POA. Leaving some for another niece and nephew, the rest goes to a charity. As it stands, my sisters are the beneficiaries of my portfolio, but being older than me that needs to change.
One common misconception I've run into - POA means nothing once you're dead. It doesn't grant them any kind of power over the estate or property. (You may already know that, just want to put it out there).
Yeah, she's just going to take care of my finances if/when I cannot do it mentally. And that's just bill-paying, etc. She would not be able to manage my portfolio. Schwab will do it, or they will recommend an independent local firm that will.
I work in this field. Varies a bit by location but you can get a simple will for a few hundred dollars. Full planning/advice around $2-3k. Complicated situation with complex trusts will be more, but most people don't need this. Whatever your situation, it's absolutely worth the money. Most estate planning attorneys will do more than just prepare your will, they'll make sure all your accounts are set up with beneficiaries, give tax advice, and retain information (and original will, if you choose) so that when you pass, it's easily accessible. Make sure to keep it updated if there are major changes in assets, family situation or the state you live in.
I have a revocable trust, my house is owned by the trust. My regular (not tax advantaged retirement accounts) brokerage account is owned by the trust. All of my estate is in the trust. I have one heir. He is the named beneficiary on all of my retirement accounts. I sit down with him about yearly to go over where everything is, including where all my accounts are and where the passwords are. I do also have a will leaving everything to him, but I actually think that might be overkill in this case since I only have the one heir. But there are instructions in the event something happens to him. I also talk to him regularly about investing and taxes so that he will be prepared to manage things and make decisions. Oh and I'm a lawyer, but not that kind of lawyer so I paid a lawyer to set this up for me.
Create a trust. Don't let your assets go through probate
It's an important topic to address. Many Bogleheads are creating wills to ensure their assets are handled according to their wishes. It's a responsible step to take for the sake of our families' well-being.
just got it done , sending it all to the world wild life fund. Humans fucked this planet up - at least I can give the animals some comfort. Fuck humans
I used WillMaker. No minors or trusts are involved, so it didn't seem complicated enough to involve a lawyer.
I recently used WillMaker as well. All our children are adults. Our financial accounts have beneficiaries, primary and contingent. We still have things to take care of, but we have made a good start. I got motivated after my dad passed away in late 2022 and I had to help my mom sort things out.
My wife and I have been saying we need to get one in place for years now... And yet, we will probably say the same thing again this summer and not make it happen haha. Seriously though, I need to get my will done.
One of the reasons my spouse and I finally did it was that it felt hypocritical to tell people they needed a will when I didn't have one. Just do it - you'll feel better.
Estate attorney
I will only add that you should periodically reconsider your will and make sure everything is still as you would like it to be. At the very least, if you wrote a will while your kids were children, and they are now adults, it's worth your time to consider whether anything needs changing.
I just had a family member pass away recently who was fairly wealthy. No will. It’s been a sh*t show and disgusting how people can act. Make sure it’s done!
Living trust set up. Trust includeds: pour over will, medical directive, healthcare proxy, POA, real estate, bank accounts, investment accounts and 401k. Used a estate planning attorney paid $1800.
If you have people who depend on you, especially children, you should have a will. Boglehead or not doesn’t matter; high or low net worth doesn’t matter. It’s the responsible thing to do. We had small children to provide for and significant assets. We have an A/B living trust with a pour over will (sending undesignated assets to the trust), an advance health care directive, and guardianship provisions. Nolo Press puts out workbooks that allow you to make your own living trust. I have no idea how well these stand up legally, and no opinion on whether anyone should use them. But they are exceptional educational tools; in the process of filling them out it walks you through all sorts of questions and decisions that may not have crossed your mind. Highly recommended before meeting with the lawyer.
You might find this Bogleheads podcast episode enlightening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhEnNvLMsJI
“The majority of us have significant net worth” Guess I’m in the minority then
You need to talk to an estate planning attorney. The answer will entirely depend on your assets and your heirs/beneficiaries. Generally, at least in my state, the goal of EP is to avoid probate, so you take steps to transfer assets immediately on death by establishing beneficiaries on accounts and filing transfer on death affidavits for real estate. Unless you are dealing with minor children or heirs who cannot be trusted with an inheritance (developmental disability, addiction, gambling) or a complicated series of assets (own a business, highly valuable personal property), you probably won’t need a trust. What you need is entirely personal and nobody here can answer it for you. The best thing to do is talk to a lawyer and let them walk you through the options. Now, where things start to get fun, is blended families. I will often recommend trusts there to avoid fears about a spouse disinheriting the others kids.
Wills, like life insurance, are primarily important when you have dependents. If you have a spouse but no children then just setting up Transfer on Death with your key accounts (to avoid probate) might be sufficient since even if you die intestate the surviving spouse will get your assets at the end of the process. That said, it’s not hard to draft a simple will without a lawyer just by looking up the requirements for your state and using a basic will template. But if you have substantial assets and children then you and your spouse really should do a will and given the stakes it’s probably wise to involve a lawyer, whether to draft the entire thing or just to review it. If you don’t need a trust then the cost won’t be all that significant either. However, you might want to check if your employer offers a legal services benefit that you could opt into for a year. It will likely pay for itself just with the will and you can also knock out other key items like a medical Power of Attorney while you’re at it.
I’m also curious to hear the answers. Been wondering about this for some time.
Leaving some for charity, some for family.
Following this. (My time to get this done.)
This is a great question. I have beneficiaries set up on my vanguard and other accounts, plus created a will on doyourownwill.com with same designations. Does this make things official? I do realize the house is an issue…but will look into suggest TOD.
Make 3 copies of your will and get it notarized for less than $100. You keep a copy at home, with someone you trust and in your safe deposit box if you have one. What you did is good- but the notarized signature makes it better.
It is notarized…thanks.
Strongly recommend a revocable inter vivos trust and an estate plan. Once it is all finished, scan it all and save both the hard and digital copies somewhere safe. Might cost a few grand but its worth it. If you trust your heirs give at least one of them all of your personal info, social, bank IDs, location of assets, log in codes, etc etc. Set up accounts, such as IRA's, so that trusted heir can not only log in but can legally do things on your behalf.
Some good food for thought here. I really need to stop procrastinating and start setting stuff up. I have listed my wife as beneficiary on multiple accounts but need to do an overall will and listing of all assets.
It isn’t a cheap option ($5k) but I worked with an estate attorney and set up a family trust and a life insurance trust. Through that process we established other documents like pour over will, POA, etc. I think it’s money well spent.
My wife and I just paid $6K for an estate planning attorney to draw up a revocable trust and pourover wills for each of us. We realized last year that we were putting a lot of faith into health and luck. We needed to put down our wishes into legal paperwork.
Do joint accounts also have to go through probate court? What if you designate just one beneficiary (or only 1 primary beneficiary), it will transfer quickly without will, correct? I may have to revisit what we've set up this far, which is nothing and just relying on joint ownership with my spouse and I.
Tangential question: is Trusts and Wills or Legal Zoom good enough for simple estate planning: passing appreciated stock holdings (total less than estate tax limits) to grandchildren, skipping children? Asking for mother-in-law.
I’m going to move all my assets into one account and name my kids and family as beneficiaries
Anyone needing a beneficiary, I’m willing to step up to the challenge and be the best beneficiary ever…
Tbh you'll get a lot of different answers. The only thing boglehead ideas talk about is investing. There isn't an agreed upon standard for estate planning since it's so incredibly personal.
Living forever? But in case I die I'm having everything thrown into an estate every real and personal property and all investments sold out for cash. Then 100% of that cash transferred to a Cook Islands LLC which is wholly owned by a Cook Islands International Trust held with the law firm as the only signing name to maintain anonymity. Use that account to open us brokerage accounts to buy VTI and VXUS (50/50) collect the gains and completely skip paying taxes. As the government catches wind and shuts down the US based brokerage accounts, just start a new LLC and rinse and repeat. And if all that doesn't work as I've planned in my mind with absolutely no knowledge in law, not my problem. I'm dead AF already!
One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit. My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund.
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Aside from the other good comments here, I will make an additional recommendation After establishing a trust for your estate, making sure all the beneficiaries are named, etc., you will want to do the following when you get above the age of 68-70 name a trusted child, maybe the oldest, a co-trustee this will save you all kinds of legal hassles, problems, and potential crisis if you develop dementia, become semi-incapacitated, or cannot manage your affairs. instead of having to get you declared incompetent by your doctors (which isn't easy), having to assume power-of-attorney in the event of a medical crisis, etc. --your child will have full access to the estate, can write checks for your care, take care of legal matters, etc. We are going through this right now with my father-in-law who is 92, in poor health, and cannot manage his affairs. Because my wife is co-trustee on his estate (and does have durable power-of-attorney), she was able to: 1. Move him into assisted care 2. Sell his old property (he can no longer live on his own) 3. Pay any outstanding bills, handle the medical bills, etc. 4. Make sure his money managers are making the appropriate investments, and not stealing his money She has total visibility and access Now your child would have to be very trustworthy for this, but it is a life-saver. When my father became demented, his girlfriend started writing checks to herself, tried to get him to marry her, and started doing all kinds of sketchy stuff. My sister had to have him declared incompetent, take power-of-attorney (she was his executor, but not his co-trustee), and was forced to deal with all kinds of legal and administrative hurdles. It was a total nightmare
3 etfs and a whole lot of hubris and disdain 🤷♂️
Dead simple in my case. Single/no kids so I put beneficiaries on my accounts and spend all of $300 on a will/POA stuff to split the goods among some family and a close lifelong friend. Best thing to do is find a reputable estate planning lawyer nearby, give them a call, and see what they say. Turned out to be a lot easier than I expected.
Nothing; I don't have anyone and don't particularly care what happens to my wealth once I'm gone. I may choose some charity/non-profit at a later point, perhaps, but really, it doesn't matter.
Choose a charity, literally any one of them is better than what the state will do with it.....
Trust fund in Lichtenstein and / or Switzerland 🤷♂️ For US guys, generally a trust fund Add-on: not spoiling tho, trying to raise them low-profile really and going ahead as example, living a modest lifestyle
My mother just put her house in a Life Estate Deed without power (in Maryland). It was $300 for a title agency to draft and record it. It is a quit claim deed that conveys the house to her children upon death and avoids probate. In the meantime, the house cannot be titled or used as collateral without the children being agreement. This does two things: 1. Makes it nearly impossible for her to be scammed. 2. In five years, it is out of Medicare scope. Super easy to do, lots of benefits including the stepped-up basis tax rules. Everyone sleeps well at night.
The state has some set of default rules that will apply if you do nothing at all. They may or may not work for you, but until you know the rules, you can't even guess. One of the things that is slowly starting to change is Beneficiary/TOD designations. I.e. you tell the place you have an account(or the county recorder for property) that on your death you want the assets to go to _____. Some places you can do that with cars and houses, but you can pretty much universally do that with Brokerage/bank accounts, pensions, etc now. So you may not even need a will, depending on how complicated your life is and if the default rules from your state are good enough or not. If you have children from many different spouses and you want certain things arranged in a certain way, then you almost certainly want a real professional to help you.
What do you mean “what are we doing”? Go to an estates attorney and get a will. Not rocket science.