You don’t have to be old or rich to need a will. Here’s why. I’m Sarah Siedentopf. I’m an estate planning attorney in Atlanta, Georgia.
First reason is if you have final wishes that you would like to have followed, specific places that you might like to rest, specific things that you want about your service, specific people that you want to be involved, this is something that you can put in your will and make sure that these things are followed.
The second thing is financial security. Your financial wishes are followed. Your will can say exactly who gets things. It can also say who doesn’t get things. Sometimes that’s just as important. And if you’ve got minor children, a will could also allow you to leave things to them in trust. It still has to go through probate, but it would allow you to say who is in charge of this money so that no one from the court has to be involved.
The third thing that having a will allows you to do is protect your family, and I’m actually gonna split this into two pieces. Guardians, if you’ve got minor children, the will allows you to designate a guardian. If something happens to you, who do you want to be in charge of taking care of them? This is much, much better than just hoping your favorite family member is chosen by the court, especially if it’s not a family member that you would choose. This is very, very important.
The second part of protecting your family is actually protecting them from the probate process. Now, wills do go through probate, but they can make the probate process much, much easier. We can avoid things like the administrator/executor having to get an insurance bond that your estate pays for. We can avoid having to do an inventory, a list of every single asset. Think of all the stuff in your house before you even start thinking about bank accounts and other stuff like that. Each of these things needs to have a value on it. This is a very long document, a very big job. Then annual returns. Every year, your executor/administrator has to say what went into the estate, what exactly happened with all of it, and where things are at at the end.
These forms often require a CPA or some other kind of financial analyst to help put them together so that the court is willing to accept them. They take a lot of time, they’re expensive. This is something that your will can say doesn’t have to happen. When you take these requirements away because you’ve chosen who’s in charge and you trust your family, it makes things so much easier, so much less hassle for everyone, and it saves your estate money so that the money goes to the people you actually want it to go to.
If you’d like to talk about a will, I would love to hear from you.
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