Secure Your Legacy: Four Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Your Will

Creating a Will is a relatively easy task with enormous ramifications that can place a painful burden on the lives you seek to benefit and protect.  These are the most common mistakes that cause misery and hardship.

Creating a will and not keeping it current.

You’ve divorced, remarried, had kids, and started a new business since you initially wrote your will, but you haven’t gotten around to updating the will yet. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this could spell disaster. If you want to protect your family, make certain you update your will whenever your circumstances change significantly. It’s especially important to keep your will updated if you have minor children. Your will should include financial provisions and guardianship provisions for them.

Creating a will and failing to make the original copy easy to locate.

Keep your will someplace secure, but make sure your family and your attorney know where it is. If the original isn’t found, things get complicated. If there’s a question about whether you had a will at all, the disposition of your property may be determined by state law. If your lawyer has access only to a copy of the will, there may be a question as to whether you destroyed your copy of the will because you decided to revoke it. Things will be much simpler if your family and your attorney know where your will is.

Creating a will and not updating the beneficiaries.

Changing circumstances may mean that you should change your beneficiaries. Don’t forget to also review your beneficiary designations for life insurance policies and retirement plans at the same time. Beneficiary designations on these accounts should also be reviewed after life-changing events, so it’s convenient to update them when you update your will.

Not accounting for all of your assets.

If there’s a property that’s not specifically accounted for in your will, you need to have a residuary clause to make sure all your property is distributed to your beneficiaries. Otherwise, property that isn’t mentioned in your will be distributed by state law, which may not be what you want at all.

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Written by : John Mangan, JD, MBA