too late to edit:
I meant to write: CA allows your home (property) to go ToD with the filing of a form with the County.
My dad’s estate went to probate because he had some stock in his name only (not joint with my mom) worth over $50k with no transfer on death instruction. If there had been transfer on death instruction/beneficiary, there would have been no probate. (State of Minnesota). Probate process was expensive — estate attorney made thousands.
^ Yes and with that individual stock ownership situation comes additional risk. The account is frozen until probate is settled. Could result in gains. Could result in losses. Nothing anyone can do about it. So while you’re paying unnecessary attorney fees, the value of the estate can be reduced by stock value. All of that could be eliminated by a TOD form (or by owning in a living trust).
Dollar threshold for probate is going to vary by state.
^But, this is fil’s issue - he had too many assets titled solely in his name with no transfer on death in place. Dh and I would currently have the same issue were one of us to pass. That is why we are looking into doing some additional planning for ourselves. It would have been so easy for fil to have made this not be an issue. Even his car was titled only his name. Hers, of course, was not. Dh and I have yours, mine, and ours. Fil and mil only had his and ours. Older, patriarchal way of thinking to some extent. He handled ALL the financial issues. Steep leaning curve for her now at nearly 80 years old.
Simply not true. The Probate Court will appoint an administrator – usually a member of the family (or in contested cases someone independent). Once the administrator is appointed, they can access the account and make arrangements to sell the shares, close the account, or whatever. The actions will need to be approved by the court, but you are not “frozen” or stuck. With liquid assets, most administrators will convert to cash as soon as possible to avoid claims of mismanagement due to stock market losses.
Depending on the circumstances, the administrator will either prepare to transfer assets to heirs or convert everything to cash and distribute the cash to heirs. Going to cash simplifies everything. Probate takes a long time because there are mandated notifications and waiting periods.
You will still have attorney fees with a living trust. The same thing happens. The Trustee is tasked with distributing assets. So he/she has to either sell everything and turn to cash, or transfer complete assets. The attorney will be there each step of the way advising and charging the trustee. It just happens quicker and without the hassle and some of the costs of court.
Posting on this thread to make it easier for me to find later. Dealing with my dad’s stuff now and there are some things he could have done to make things easier (one of which being saving money instead of investing in all sort of collectibles we have to sell - he had no interest in the collectibles - he just thought they were a great investment - they weren’t!).
We’ve talked extensively with our lads about our wishes for the future, but the info on here seems to be worth reading when I have time.
My mom wants to make things as easy as possible too. She’s already done the beneficiary and joint accounts part to be helpful. She’s thinking in her will to essentially leave everything to me and letting me distribute. (I’d have a google list of what she wanted.) Technically that should be easy, but I fully expect my sibling would contest that. I’ve seen a greedy side of her I didn’t realize existed in this past week. Her son (my mom’s grandson) is the same way.
Here is a checklist I found. Can’t vouch for what’s in it, but it certainly seems thorough. Hope this is allowed???
https://www.balancepro.net/education/pdf/survivingspouse.pdf
@Creekland, a problem with your mom’s plan is that if you happen to die shortly after she does, that is, before you’ve had a chance to distribute the property, all your mom’s property would be in your estate, and there would be no guarantee that her desired distribution would be honored. And it’s likely that if you die at the same time, for example, in an accident, your death would be treated as occurring before hers, and her property would go to the secondary beneficiaries (if the will lists any) or would be divided according to her state’s intestate rules (for people dying without a will).
And, here is an article from AARP about credit cards. This was something that we were unaware of. We may think they are “joint,” but apparently, they are not.
https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2018/debt-after-death.html
" I had absolutely no one I could trust to be my administrator in case I died with the trust that I have now, including my kid. Now, I do. Also, having to go through probate is expensive, but in a weird way mitigates fraud. A lot of fraud is a result of having a untrustworthy administrator. To be honest, I’m not sure if my deceased wife is turning in her grave now at the thought of me being remarried."
Honestly, if I die before my spouse does I hope at some point he finds another person to share the remainder of his life with. However, I wouldn’t be thrilled if that person got all the assets that I worked so hard for instead of my children.
“Dangerous to ignore a child in a will in most jurisdictions.”
“Technically that should be easy, but I fully expect my sibling would contest that.”
If a will/ trust specifically leaves out a child, then the documents should specifically state that X person is intentionally left out of the will to avoid legal problems.
So what are others doing in the event your primary and secondary beneficiaries are not alive upon your death? Not that you can provide for every eventuality but I could envision scenarios where my spouse and my kids and I could die together, in a travel related accident for instance.
Have you all outlined tertiary beneficiaries? If so, who and how?
In my current will, my primary beneficiaries are my daughters. My secondary beneficiaries are my siblings. None of these people live with each other, so I think it’s relatively unlikely that all of us would die together. The only person to whom I am related that I would not want to inherit from me, just because doing so would complicate her life, is my mom, and the only situation in which I can envision me and my daughters and my siblings dying together is if we were at my mom’s house. If that were to happen, I assume my mom would be there and die, too.
Two of my siblings have children, and I would be fine with my estate going to them.
@doschicos - In my old will, which I badly need to redo… We had a few scenarios where everyone died together. In that case, the distribution was 60% to our siblings and 40% to our nieces and nephews. New people have been born and married so I would like to redistribute that a bit. We left out our parents because we figured they would be likely to be gone already.
We made a stipulation that the nieces and nephews could be biological or adopted, but that they would have to be born or legally adopted at the time of our deaths. No claims months or years later. And if it was a big sum of $$ (which might happen if your whole family went down on a plane), the $$ would be held back from the niece or nephew until s/he reached a certain age, and it would be managed by their parent that was biologically related to one of us ( no exes managing niece’s money from Aunt Greenwitch!). I thought up that last part and the lawyer was impressed, lol.
ETA - as the siblings get older, I’d like to change it a bit so that the nieces and nephews would get their parent’s share if their parent predeceases us. And for the siblings without children, their spouse would get their share if the sibling predeceases us. We also need to add provisions for future grandchildren and spouses of our children. It’s like a giant flow chart.
In our will, we have a provision that decides the order of death in case everyone dies together. The assets will be distributed by what the last person to die specified in their will.
Nothing.
I guess there is always a risk that we are traveling together, but that hasn’t happened in many years, with the exception of piling into the car to go to dinner or the mall.
Under our Trust when one of us goes, everything (including separate property) goes to Survivor. Upon death of Survivor, S gets everything free of Trust. If S has predeceased Survivor, then everything will go to granddaughter with DIL (or another named successor trustee) overseeing as described in Trust. If S and granddaughter have predeceased Survivor, then everything would be distributed to the alternative beneficiaries (ABs) that the Survivor has named in Trust. If Survivor has named say three ABs with each getting one third, to collect their third, an AB would have to be alive at time of distribution; otherwise their one third share would go back into pot to be divided equally among surviving ABs. The purpose of this requirement for AB to be alive at time of distribution otherwise back into pot, is to prevent say a child of an AB from trying to step up and collect an AB’s share. If all ABs had predeceased Survivor, what’s left would go to a named charity. Our Trust also includes provision that disinherits specifically named siblings, nieces and nephews.
My will currently leaves all to my spouse. If he predeceases me, it’s split in fifths, one for each child, per stirpes (my children’s children would split their shares, but as of now, I have no grands). If a child pre-deceases, with children, it’s as above. If a child of mine dies childless, their share is split evenly amongst the others. Our wills do hold back and distribute by age, primarily because my oldest child is a spendthrift. I may add a codicil raising the age because he’s now 28 and still living at home and spending his entire salary. I am also thinking about giving him his inheritance as a monthly allowance through a trust. He works for USPS and will likely make a career out of it, but he’s such a spendthrift. He is just like both his and my fathers… The younger kids are all much better with money.
I have beneficiaries and contingent bennys on my IRA’s and 401(k), as well as my life insurance, but I have some hidden bank accounts. I may add my D to them as joint so it can be accessed by her if I pass. H’s will is the same. He has separate money, in his lawyer’s operating account, that would be frozen, but I can live without it for a while. I make no provisions for any spouses of children and I specifically disinherited my only sibling; my parents are dead. H also disinherited both his only sibling and his mother.
My only D and my second son are joint executors. She is the heart of the family and he is the robot brain, math mind. Together, everything will be fair. The other children are aware of this and have no concerns.
I am the beneficiary of the life insurance that my company provides for my under 26 kids. If I die before them, there’s no more insurance since I won’t be working there, so there’s no contingent beneficiary. H and I are the bennys of each other’s life insurance with the kids as contins. Now that they are all over 18, it is easier.
H and I have a trust set up but we have not funded it yet. Our houses are all jointly owned. Some of the cars are mine, some his and some ours, and this is generally a function of whether or not I was able to go to DMV with him when the car was registered. I am going to talk to him about titling all of them in both of our names, just in case.
H will inherit his mom’s house (her will also disinherits the sibling, who is on public benefits which create a lien and could result in any inheritance being seized). I have a separate inheritance from an aunt that I have not mingled. She doesn’t have any other assets, other than a small bank account with her SS in it. She has some jewelry that she gave to my D and oldest son and some to her D (who has no kids, but also has no assets).
If my sibling dies without a will, I would inherit but we are estranged and I don’t really care.
This is making me think that I should sit down and talk with my kids.
@techmom99 : You have things nicely organized. I would only suggest that you look into funding the trust automatically from your estates if something happens, but I don’t know what kind of trust you are talking about and I am not in a position to give legal advice. I highly approve of making D joint on at least one bank account, so she can immediately pay bills out of what will become estate funds.
@doschicos : If we’re all dead at the same time, it goes half to Reed College and half to the University of Kentucky.
“In our will, we have a provision that decides the order of death in case everyone dies together. The assets will be distributed by what the last person to die specified in their will.”
Ours ( a trust) states differently. If anyone dies that day or within 30 days, it remains with the trust. So, if spouse, are young adult kids and I are in a car crash, they aren’t the beneficiaries if they live hours or days longer than die.
We will likely reflect similar to @greenwitch with the tertiary beneficiaries being siblings and nieces/nephews (and some charities) but we have one person we need to state as being disinherited. Also our parents as well I guess. They are older, don’t need the money/won’t have time to use it.
Some of you mention secret/hidden accounts. Just curious as to why the secret accounts?