Eight Things NOT To Put In Your Will

hey estate planning attorney paul rabaly here and in this video we're going to talk about eight count on eight things that you should not put in your will all right sometimes people die and the survivors bring in the will and i read over the wheel and i'm like why in the world is was this written into the will and you know sometimes we see stuff that shouldn't be in there in wills that are typed up notarize and witness they were they were written by lawyers and we go why is that provision in the will but in many times people many cases people as in my state of louisiana sometimes people write their own will they do it in their handwriting it's called an oleographic wheels other states it's called a holographic will about 25 states permit people to handwrite their own wills no notary no witness requirement and then sometimes in these olographic wheels we see people seem to just to want to blow just vomit stuff on the paper and they're writing and they're writing and they're writing and they're writing all kinds of stuff that shouldn't be in the will so i'm going to go through kind of eight things that really shouldn't be in your will number one is funeral arrangements you know it's probably not a good idea to you know to pass away uh your family buries you six feet underground and then a week later they open up your will and in your will you said you wanted to be cremated you know then the family may have a decision to make hmm do we dig them up so uh you know there's there's a right way and a wrong way to um document your funeral wishes anyway whether it's informally communicating to those family family members legally putting a separate document in writing as to who has the right to make all of those burial and funeral decisions but putting it in the will because the wheel isn't reviewed until sometimes weeks after somebody dies isn't the place to do it number two organ donation you can save lives you can save multiple lives by being an organ donor i'm very involved in our louisiana organ procurement agency i've seen it um seen people's you know people who i know people who are living today because of organ donation they would not be living today if it were not for organ donation but putting the fact that you want to be an organ donor in your will that's a mistake so there is a proper way to document being an organ donor and in my state you can do it online you can do it at the office of motor vehicles put the little red heart on your driver's license but putting it in your will is not the place to put your organ donation you know desires or wishes again same thing you pass away you've got organs that could be used by other people you could be saving lives but you know you get cremated you get buried a week later they open the wheel i want to be an organ donator organ donor oops too late so make sure you do that the right way number three designating who gets your ira or your individual retirement account we see this not only in the holographic wheels where people don't know any better but sometimes we see this in the wheels drafted by lawyers where there's a provision in the will that says you know and for some people their ira is their single largest financial asset some people have you know they have a home that's worth two hundred thousand dollars they have a checking account with ten thousand dollars in it and they have an ira worth a million dollars because they built it up over so many years working for a company having a 401k they retired rolled it over to an ira that's by far their largest asset and in their will they mistakenly put you know i leave my ira to fred but 25 years earlier when they set up the ira account on the beneficiary designation form they don't remember any of this because it was 25 years ago but as a formality in setting up the account they had to designate a beneficiary and they put darla as the beneficiary 25 years ago well they die who gets the money darling gets the money because she was the designated beneficiary what it states in the will about where his ira goes means nothing now i guess there's an asterisk there or an exception if on the ira which it never does and never should if on the ira beneficiary designation form it designates the estate as the beneficiary which there's no reason to do that particularly no tax reason to do that then it flows through the estate and goes to the heirs named in the wheel but but that's the only time where the will may impact where an ira might go make sure you designate beneficiaries on your ira number four your life support machine decision so many people come in and tell me paul look if there's no hope if i'm a vegetable and i'm just hooked up to machines i don't want to see my family suffer i don't want to incur a lot of expense if there's no chance that i can come out of this and have any quality of life let me go take me off the machines but again putting in the will that's not the place to do it it's the living wheel declaration it's a separate instrument when you're admitted to a hospital you're likely to be asked do you have a living will maybe the word will shouldn't be in living will because too many people confuse living will with last will and so they just think it's all the same thing but anyway your life support machines decisions should be documented in your living will or living will declaration not your last will or last will and testament number five now some people many people have gone to attorneys and set up trusts or living trust and they do that many of them do it because they don't want their survivors their family members to have to go through the court and attorney involvement of probate when they die so they put assets in their trust let's say they put their home and their stock account in their trust and then in their will they say i want my all my stock to go to samantha and then they die and guess who doesn't get the stock samantha because the trust instrument controls where the trust assets go so the will only controls where the only controls the assets that are in your name when you die if you've moved assets into a trust the trust really replaces the will and the trust instrument determines who gets those trust assets when you die so who gets the stock is based on the terms of the trust now maybe in your trust you said when i die i want my stock to go to samantha and you put that in the appropriate way and the trust instrument then samantha would get it but if the trust says um you know when i die the trust assets go to my three children equally that stock's going to go to the three children equally so be conscious of the fact that your trust determines where the trust assets go number six assets in an llc we see this a lot many people who own rental property for example they own those properties in an llc a limited liability company in order to avoid personal liability for debts of the llc and let's say they own seven pieces of property in their one llc and then in their will they say i want property abc sesame street to go to this person i want cdf sesame street to go to this person but all those properties are tied into that one llc and now they could they could donate or bequeath membership interests in their llc to other parties but they they can't really designate individual properties that are all encompassed within that llc to others perhaps if they have seven different properties and one llc and they want those properties to go to seven different people perhaps they should remove those properties from the one llc create seven different llc's and bequeath a their membership interest in each of those different seven llc's to seven different people i know that sounds complicated but you got to get it right because it's a mess when it's messy okay and number seven um again a really big one for the ola graphic wheels the the reasons why you left a bequest there's a right and wrong way to do that but probably in your will is not the right place just to vomit i'm leaving 25 000 to my granddaughter ella great great for you great for ella and then we see in the wheel and i'm leaving it to ella because she calls me once a week when i was sick she picked me up mcdonald's and brought it to my house and then every christmas and mother's day she comes and visits me and my other grandchildren they only call maybe once a month and they only came and visited me two years ago on mother's day and not on valentine's day so that's why i'm leaving i'm like oh man geez that there's no place in the will for that now if you really want to do communicate that stuff maybe in a separate uh writing a separate communication that doesn't have to get filed at the courthouse put into the court filing and all of that so again we see a lot of that um people feel like they've got to just go on and on in their older graphic wheels that's not the place to do it and then number eight similar to the iras that i discussed in number three number eight is the life insurance and annuities you bought life insurance 40 years ago and you have absolutely no recollection that you designated beneficiaries when you acquired the life insurance policy but now that life insurance is two hundred thousand dollars and in your will you say i want my grandson mark to get my 200 000 life insurance policy good job mark but then 40 years ago or 30 years ago or 10 years ago when you acquired the life insurance policy you designated at the time you wanted mary to get the life insurance so she's the one listed as the designated beneficiary in your life insurance i think most people know this but mary's going to get that life insurance because she's the one designated as the beneficiary on the life insurance does beneficiary designation form even though in your will you said you wanted so and some other person to get your life insurance proceeds same thing applies with annuities annuities and life insurance all sold by insurance companies all those have beneficiary designations kind of like they're the ira there is this exception when the estate is designated as the beneficiary then what's in the will does have impact on where those life insurance proceeds annuity proceeds or ira proceeds may go all right so that's a quickie on eight different things that you shouldn't include in your will make sure you turn the like button from gray to blue if you haven't already subscribed hit the notification bell that way you won't miss anything i'm taking off i'm in my office right now i'm going home we'll see you next time take care

Channel: Rabalais Estate Planning, LLC

Views: 1,137,118

Rating: 4.9301424 out of 5

Keywords: Things to keep out of will, Bequests to exclude in will, What not to include in will, What not to say in last will, What not to include in last will and testament, Keep funeral arrangements out of will, how to donate organs, holographic testaments, holographic will, Louisiana last will and testament, Louisiana living will, Louisiana organ donation

Id: AnQVwV7cPXw

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020