Articles from August 2016 - The U.S. Legal Wills Blog

As with any task that comes to mind on odd occasions in your life, writing your Will can seem overwhelming. So much so, that most people don’t do it. However, if you are coming to this page, something that probably happened in your life to make you realize that writing a Will is a vitally important task.

Sadly most people who feel an immediate need to prepare their Will just do a Google search for a local estate planning attorney. They make an appointment, pay several hundreds or thousands of dollars and live with the peace of mind that the task is finally off their To Do list. As long as they don’t need to update it.

However, with a little research, you will quickly understand that writing your Will needn’t be difficult, inconvenient or expensive

Here are ten quick steps to writing your Will; Continue reading →

What are blended families?

Blended families is a term that includes families for whom one or both partners have children from a previous marriage. In other words, your spouse may not be the biological parent of your children. Blended families have become increasingly common, especially as the divorce rate in many countries including the United States hovers around fifty percent. There are several nuances that emerge when you write a Will for a blended family situation.

Blended families have to balance bequests between children from previous marriages and the current marriage.

Put simply, if you leave everything to your spouse in your Will, and they are not the biological parent of your children, there is every chance that their life would move on. There is then a distinct possibility that your children may not even be a factor in their estate plan.