funeral wishes

There is a common misconception that you should include funeral wishes in your Will. This doesn’t make sense for a couple of reasons; your funeral wishes are not legally binding and do not have to be signed and witnessed. Furthermore, your Will has to go through the court process called probate. It doesn’t make sense for your expression of funeral wishes to go through this process. We recommend that you write your funeral wishes on a separate piece of paper, or even use our free MyFuneral tool. And store the document with your Will.

Every document you need for a complete estate plan.

Writing your Last Will and Testament is a very important step to protect your family and loved ones. It allows you to make key appointments, and also describe the distribution of your assets. But it is only step part of a complete estate plan.

At USLegalWills.com we offer a complete estate planning service – you are able to create all of the documents that you need in one place. In this article we will describe all of the documents that make up a complete estate plan. We will explain the role of each document, and let you know how and where you can create each document.

There is a difference between writing a Will, and creating your complete estate plan. Here are the documents that you need.

A Last Will and Testament

What is it?

A Last Will and Testament serves two important functions. It allows you to make key appointments, and then allows you to describe the distribution of your “assets” (everything that you own).

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Estate Planning: Best Advice for New Parents

There are around four million births every year in the US. That’s a lot of babies to clothe, feed and diaper change. Becoming a parent is one of the greatest joys in life but it also brings with it a lot of responsibilities.When your child is born you might not think immediately about estate planning, but if you’re smart, you will know that you need to consider this question now! Getting this planning done right away is some of the best advice for new parents that we can give.

Best Advice for New Parents: Estate Planning with Children

Every parent wants to make sure their children are provided for in the event something happens to them while the children are still minors. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives often want to leave some of their assets to young children, too. But good intentions and poor planning often have unintended results. The following points will help guide you through some important steps to ensure careful planning for your estate and children.

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Pets in a Will – how do you make sure that your pets are cared for?

Should You Make Provision for Your Pets in a Will?

We have all seen the stories of eccentric millionaires who leave their fortune to their pets in a Will. Their relatives are cut out of the Will, but Fido receives a very generous legacy. But it’s not as easy as you may think to leave something to your pets in a Will.

One of the most famous of these cases is that of billionaire Leona Helmsley’s dog. He was the lucky pooch who inherited $12 million from her estate. The Maltese dog, perhaps appropriately named “Trouble” was one of the major benefactors of her estate. Some of the family members weren’t quite so fortunate. Two grandchildren received nothing, and Leona evicted her son’s widow after his death. Trouble did not get quite as much money as he bargained for as a judge later reduced the amount to $2 million. The grandchildren who Leona excluded were awarded $6 million and the balance went to charity.

Leona Helmsley earned the title of “Queen of Mean” during her lifetime. She served 18 months in prison for tax evasion. Unfortunately, her gift to her dog made Trouble the most hated dog in the country. He is said to have received numerous death and kidnapping threats, so had to have a permanent security guard with him. He lived in style, but only spent about $190,000 a year. Most of that was on his security detail. Although we are sure there was plenty left over for grooming and food. Continue reading →

Writing a Legal Will: the worst advice we have seen yet

Much of our customer support effort is spent on correcting misunderstandings that have usually arisen from bad information that has been posted on the Internet. As with anything that you do once or twice in your lifetime, the terms will be unfamiliar, and there will be a lot to learn. But the task is made that much more difficult by woefully incorrect information that proliferates on different “advice blogs”. The example at the top of the page is from a reasonably well respected resource at Nerdwallet (we couldn’t help but post a comment under their article, so they may have fixed it if you click through). But this staff writer, who doesn’t appear to have any legal training has written; Continue reading →