I just chatted with an Estate Planning attorney over lunch the other day.  The biggest travesty he often witnesses is seeing an entire estate getting obliterated by legal fees and probate costs … all because there was no will.  He mentioned that he recently saw a rather modest estate of about $400,000+ completely wiped out.

The Boston Globe just printed an article on the same topic. In it, author Jill Boynton asks "Do you have a will?" and offers the most common reasons for not having one:

The two most likely reasons are “I never got around to it” and “we can’t decide who will be the guardian for our children” (wills generally include an appointment of a guardian for minor children.) Not having a will, however, means dying “intestate”, and thus leaving the decision of how your assets are divided up to the state.

Some assets come with a built-in inheritor. For instance when you open any kind of retirement account you are asked to name a primary beneficiary. Also any asset held as “joint ownership with rights of survivorship” will automatically go to the surviving joint owner. But many assets in your individual name have no clear beneficiary unless you name one in your will.

The same Estate Planning attorney I spoke with mentioned that even if you scrawled something on a napkin, it might help save thousands in probate! Of course, nothing beats a formally written document, but it's better than nothing!

If you have any estate planning questions, just contact me and I can forward you to a competent professional.

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