Five Reasons to Write a Will

In its most simple form, a Last Will and Testament is a written document executed following the law of your state in which you designate who will receive your property after you die. Wills are often customized to have many more provisions, such as defining who will be responsible for probating your Will and what powers that person will have.

Having a well-written Will can greatly simplify matters for your loved ones after you are gone. This means cost savings because probating a Will is typically much less expensive (and faster) than administering an estate for someone who does not have a Will.

If you don’t have a Will, state law determines who your heirs will be and often it is not who you think it will be. If you don’t name a personal representative in a Will, the personal representative could be whoever applies to the Court to be appointed and that person could be someone who would not be a good fit for that role. Your heirs may submit competing applications to the court to be appointed the personal representative and this can be a very costly process to your loved ones. One of your creditors could apply to be appointed as your personal representative. Be proactive and help your loved ones avoid all these problems by writing a Will with the assistance of a qualified attorney.

Top Five Reasons to Write a Will:

1 | Choose Who Will Inherit

If you don’t have a will in which you decide who will inherit from you and what they will inherit, don’t worry, Texas law has decided for you! And you might be surprised who inherits from you under Texas law. If you die without a will, Texas law has defined who your heirs are and what percentage of your property that person will inherit. When you make a Will, you make your own decisions about what happens to your property after you pass away.

2 | Choose Who Will Wind Up Your Affairs

An Executor named in a Will is the person who will find and gather the deceased person’s property, pay valid creditors, and distribute the property to the heirs. Naming an Executor (personal representative) in a Will and defining in your Will what the Executor can and cannot do gives you control over who will be responsible for carrying out the terms of your Will and how that person will do that.

3 | Minimize the Costs of Probate

Appointing your Executor in your Will and designating that he or she act independently can significantly reduce the cost to your family of paying any debts and distributing property after you pass away. Without a Will and without an Independent Executor appointed in that will, your estate may pass by dependent administration which can run result in a slow and expensive probate. Another cost savings for your family when you write a Will is the fact that if the Will is written properly, your family can avoid a determination of heirship by the court. A determination of heirship can cost an estate thousands of dollars and can completely be avoided with a professionally drafted Will.

4 | Take Care of Your Surviving Spouse

Under Texas law, there are many situations in which your surviving spouse will not inherit all of your property unless you have a Will. It is incredibly important to consult an estate planning attorney to ensure that you do the proper estate planning so that your surviving spouse will inherit what you want that person to inherit. This is important even if you only have children with your current spouse.

5 | Take Care of Your Children from a Previous Relationship

Use your will in conjunction with other estate planning strategies to distribute property fairly between your spouse and children from a previous relationship. If you have children from a previous relationship, then you will need to do estate planning to direct certain property to those children. You cannot assume that your children will inherit what you want them to inherit without doing estate planning. Your current spouse may inherit much more of your property than you expect. It is also important to choose the proper Executor in your Will (and Trustee if you have a Trust) to reduce discord between your surviving spouse and your children from a previous marriage.

These are just a few reasons to have a Will. Contact our office to get started writing your Will.