Abstract
What elements make up the anatomy of a will? After all, this is the document that will be here when you’re gone, as a statement of your wishes and intent. In this chapter I talk about what a will can and can’t do, what the boilerplate terms are, and why they’re important. The goal of this chapter is to give you a blueprint to read your will and understand what it says.
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- 1.
Non-probate assets are so important to your estate plan that they deserve a chapter of their own. Chapter 5 is all about assets that go to your beneficiaries without passing through your will.
- 2.
Consider a trust! You may find that it doesn’t work for you, but trusts can be a powerful way to design an inheritance. I love them and want you to get to know them better, so I spend all of Chapter 6 on trusts.
- 3.
Of course, it could be that you only want certain members of a group to benefit (only some of your children, for example). In that case, you should use the names of the people you want, instead of just their relationship to you.
- 4.
Except for Louisiana, where some children have a right of inheritance.
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© 2013 Deirdre R. Wheatley-Liss
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Wheatley-Liss, D.R. (2013). What Goes into a Will?. In: Plan Your Own Estate. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-4495-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-4495-0_4
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Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
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