Part of your relationship with loved ones is ensuring they receive the money, real estate, business interests, and treasured mementos you have collected. Part of our relationship with you as diligent estate planning attorneys is to ensure that happens seamlessly. The cornerstone document of all estate planning is the will. Once the probate court validates it, your executor and attorney begin the orderly distribution process.
Whether you have a vast fortune or a modest one, creating a will is essential. If you do not allocate your possessions and die intestate, the court will determine who receives your assets, and it could be the opposite of your wishes. The best time to create a will is today. If your circumstances change, you can change assets and beneficiaries throughout your lifetime, too, with the help of a Melville wills lawyer.
Our skilled attorneys take the time to get to know our clients, their families, and their needs. We customize all estate planning documents to protect and preserve the wealth they accumulate and wish to pass on to loved ones, friends, and charities. Some information appears in most wills, including:
We understand that considering death is difficult when there is much living to do. But adopting a will and other estate planning documents is a gesture of care for loved ones. Our Melville wills attorneys place families above all else and are here to help our clients’ families thrive from youth to old age.
Some assets are not transferred through a will. These include property, such as the marital home held in joint tenancy between the spouses, retirement accounts and insurance policies that name beneficiaries, and bank accounts with a pay-on-death designation. Testators, those who draft wills, do not own the payout on their life insurance policies, leaving the insurer to distribute it once the person who took it out dies.
People have often tried to leave bequests to family pets, but the court considers pets as property. Testators can leave money and the pet to a loved one if they agree to care for the animal, or a Melville attorney could help a person to create a trust for the pet’s benefit as part of a will. Charities can also inherit or be trust beneficiaries.
Dying without a will, called dying intestate, is a recipe for family infighting, especially if a testator made promises that are not now in writing. What a testator should have done, the courts will do instead, using a formula. According to the New York Consolidated Laws, Estates, Powers, & Trusts Section 4-1.1, if the decedent leaves no children, the surviving spouse inherits everything, and surviving children inherit everything if there is no spouse. If there is a spouse and children, the spouse inherits the first $50,000 and half the remainder, and the children share in the balance. As a Melville attorney skilled in wills could explain, parents and siblings inherit only if there is no spouse or children.
Most American estates are not billion-dollar ones but those amassed by hardworking people who wish to pass assets to their loved ones to build generational wealth. You want to have a say in who gets what, and we could help you do that through targeted estate planning.
Wills are the foundational tool for passing along assets, and you can change them as needed at any time as your family grows and changes. Adopting a will is giving yourself peace of mind. A Melville wills lawyer will walk you through the process to safeguard your assets and the security of your next generation loved ones. Contact us for a consultation meeting.
