Pour Over Wills
If your only experience with wills comes from the entertainment media and from tabloid news, you might reasonably believe that your only options are to divide your estate among your family members or to show your ungrateful relatives who is boss by leaving your property to a charity that is meaningful to you but not to them. These are not the only options, though, as you will find out when you meet with an estate planning lawyer to work on your estate plan. In fact, it is possible to leave your property to your family indirectly through your will, even if the will does not name your relatives as beneficiaries. Pour over wills can be the simplest way to ensure that your property reaches your family members safely and quickly, but only if you follow the procedures correctly. For help setting up your estate plan so that a pour over will can be legally valid and drafting your pour over will, contact a Dade City probate lawyer.
How to Make a Pour Over Will Legally Valid
A pour over will is a will where the only beneficiary is a trust created during the testator’s lifetime; the trust might be revocable or irrevocable. Testators have the right to name trusts as beneficiaries of their wills pursuant to the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act (UTATA). In order for the pour over will to be legally valid, you must create the trust before you write the will. If the trust is revocable, you may continue to amend its trust instrument after you have drafted and formalized the pour over will. A pour over will must also satisfy the other formal requirements for wills in Florida; for example, it must be typewritten or word processor-generated instead of handwritten, and it must bear the signatures of two adult witnesses who signed the will in the presence of the testator.
A Pour Over Will Plus Summary Probate Is a Win-Win Situation
People choose pour over wills because they want their family members to inherit from them, but the idea of a family member getting a lump sum inheritance worries them. The beneficiaries might spend the money foolishly, or greedy in-laws may intimidate the beneficiary into spending the inherited money as the in-laws choose. The simplest solution is to transfer as much of your property as you can to the trust while you are alive; the assets in the trust will not be part of your estate during probate. Ideally, you can get the value of your estate down low enough that it qualifies for summary administration, which is faster and less expensive than conventional probate. You can also make your trust the beneficiary of assets that do not ordinarily become part of your estate, such as life insurance policies.
Contact a Florida Estate Planning Attorney About Pour Over Wills
A probate attorney can help you if you are the personal representative of an estate where the testator wrote a pour over will. Contact The Law Office of Laurie R. Chane in Dade City, Florida to discuss your case.
