Wills Category Archives — Page 8 of 8 — Legal Insurance Blog Published by Cherry Hill, New Jersey Legal Insurance Company — Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc.

July 23, 2013

Use A Professional to Draft a Will

These documents require legal clarity

There are a number of websites that advertise the ability to draft a will for an individual. It’s a very simple fill in the blanks type of arrangement, and the selling point is a person avoids large legal fees. The appeal is very nice but consumers have to be very careful. This is not as cut and dried as it looks.

Simple wills are for small estates that are not very complicated. However, in this day and age people have a multitude of investments and financial assets that can be very complex. Real estate, IRAs, contributory retirement plans such as 401(k)s, and personal property such as jewelry are all part of a deceased person’s estate. This person may want things to go to certain individuals or there may be an instance where there is a minor, whose needs have to be taken care of and a guardian has to be appointed. To put it directly, the more there is to a person’s estate, the less value these boilerplate Internet documents have.

June 27, 2013

Establishing an Estate in Pennsylvania

by Len Feltoon

Pennsylvania is a state of diversity and that is putting it very mildly. It ranges from the urban sophistication of Philadelphia all the way to the deer hunting wilds of Western Pennsylvania. Its people come from all types of backgrounds with families who have roots established hundreds of years ago, to the newest immigrants arriving in the airports. They all share one sizable challenge: providing a legacy for their surviving loved ones.

A Forest of Procedure

Pennsylvania is one of the few states that does not levy estate tax, but instead uses an inheritance tax. The Pennsylvania inheritance tax has various bends and curves, and not all family members are exempt from it. This tax is applied to specific beneficiaries of the survivor group. Legal statute in Pennsylvania will exempt spouses and minor children, but siblings and those persons having a parent in common with the deceased by blood or adoption receive no such exemption. There are other provisions, such as exemptions for family farms that can make everything rather complicated. This is in addition to a formal filing of the will with the Register of Wills in the deceased’s county of residence, and all of the process that probate law does require. It can be a very dense thicket of legal activity, and is incredibly time-consuming to say the very least.

May 20, 2013

Executing Wills and Estates in Maryland

by Len Feltoon

The unexpected death of an employee doesn’t just cause a disruption in the workplace; it creates a domestic crisis. There is an estate which has to be administered and properly divided among the legal heirs. Estate administration is where some real problems can bubble up.

Not everybody thinks about wills and estates. A number of people will not prepare a will, thinking that because there are only one or two survivors the estate process will not be difficult at all. That isn’t true. Estates of those who die intestate, i.e. without leaving a will, must be handled by an administrator appointed by a public entity such as probate court and this person is under very close supervision (The duty of overseeing the administration of estates is performed by the Register of Wills in Maryland). An administrator is limited to what the law permits that person to do, and it is better to have an executor who is named in the will as the one tasked with administering the provisions of the document.

Anyone drafting a will should seriously consider what individual will be the executor. Unlike an administrator, the executor has both authority granted by law and additional powers granted by the will itself, allowing for greater flexibility in matters such as the sale of property. The executor does need to be somebody who is responsible and willing to take on the task. However, there is a lot of work in seeing to it a will is properly administered and survivors receive their allotted shares. A critical activity is to educate the executor beforehand and even prepare things so that his or her job is made as easy as possible. The challenge is that someone who is not well-versed in probate law does not quite know how to best instruct that very important person.