Why Review & Update Your Will
Neufeld Legal P.C. can be reached by telephone at 403-400-4092 or email Chris@NeufeldLegal.com
Although most people would prefer to avoid going through the added time and cost involved in having their last will & testament reviewed and update, there are numerous reasons for which this needs to be a regular occurring process, in particular where the courts have made the process of administering a will that much simpler if it meets revised administrative requirements.
Statutory revisions to the process of administering a will upon your death can be significant, and should not be overlooked, especially where it eliminates the time, cost and hassle that goes along an outdate form of last will & testament.
If you can reduce the time and inevitable legal costs associated with having your will processed by the court following your death, this alone should make you look at having your current will reviewed and potentially updated.
However, there are a number of added reasons for which you might consider having your estate planning documentation reviewed.
A. Changes with your Executors / Personal Representatives
For any number of reasons, the individuals that you previously believed were appropriate to serve as your executor or personal representative might not be so, whether that is due to their death, disability, old age, relocation or the end of your personal relationship with that individual, among other reasons.
This in turn could result in their being unable or unwilling to serve as your executor or personal representative, such that you don’t have someone who is going to be looking out for your best interests upon your death, and it may necessitate the court to be involved and substantial costs being accrued by your estate to now pay for the administration of your estate, when this could have been dealt with in advance.
B. Changes with your Beneficiaries (prospective Guardians)
The most significant beneficiaries that demand renewed consideration in your will are children; whether it is children being born, being adopted or otherwise under consideration because of a recent marriage or other relationship alterations, children reaching the age of majority, or other circumstances involving one’s children, such disability, inability to manage their own money, bad personal relationships, and other heartbreaking situations, often of the children’s own making and poor life decisions.
You also need to address prospective guardians, if required, with the same level of inquiry as you would with your executors / personal representatives, as life has a way of impact those individuals as well.
Beyond children, circumstances with the other prospective beneficiaries can also change, for any number of reasons, make it important to revisit each of those situations on a regular basis.
C. Changes in How You Wish to Dispose of your Assets (Alterations in your Assets)
Over time, people make changes as to how they wish to dispose of their assets, as well as what assets they own.
Unfortunately, there have been scenarios where parents have sought to facilitate an equitable division of their assets between their children, with one child receiving the family home and the other children receiving the balance of the estate. Yet, where the family home has been sold and there is no corresponding change in the will, that one child could very easily find themselves left with nothing, because no one had looked at the will and considered making the necessary updates.
D. Marriage, Divorce, Retirement, Relocation
Not only can changes with respect to your executors, personal representatives and your beneficiaries demand an alteration in your last will & testament, the same applies to yourself on a number of fronts, be that marriage, divorce, retirement or relocation.
Yes, the courts, through provisions in the applicable legislation, provide a degree of protection in relation to divorce and relocation; however, those protections are limited and generic, with potential added cost, such that you shouldn’t defer those limited protections.
Instead, when it comes to a range of alternations in one’s personal life or financial position, it is also time to consider revisiting your will and other estate planning documents, otherwise you could very easily find that your estate has become subject to the proverbial law of unintended consequences, and this one personal life event has distorted the best laid plans that you might have had with your last will & testament and other estate planning documents.
E. Issues in the Current Estate Planning Documents
There are far too many existing wills that I have reviewed and explained that were actually inconsistent with the desires and intentions of the individuals for whom those wills were created.
Yet, the sad reality is that because of how most wills are drafted, far too many wills fail to involve a proper explanation as to what will transpire under a number of different scenarios, and it is only with a serious legal reading of the wording in the will actually does, do the people come to the realization that this isn’t what they ever intended.
If you want to leave things to chance when it comes to the disposition of your estate upon your death, you do that at your own peril without having a proper legal understanding of what is actually going to transpire under your will in multiple scenarios, which are not entirely unlikely to happen, especially if your own will hasn’t been reviewed for many years, and life inevitably creates changes out of your control.
F. No Surviving Beneficiaries and Where the Money Goes
One of the more shocking scenarios arises where as a result of life’s circumstances and the inadequate drafting of an individual’s last will & testament, and the inability of the governing legislation to provide an escape route, that there are no surviving beneficiaries for your estate.
So, what than happens to your estate, in most jurisdictions, it passes to the government, which isn’t all that shocking given that they wrote up the legislation that deals with these scenarios.
However, there are very few people who want to see their estate pass on the government, especially when there are far more deserving people and organisations who could properly benefit from your estate.
Yet, if this hasn’t been dealt with appropriately in your will and other estate planning documents, that is where all the money you worked for and accumulated may very well be headed, which tends to be particularly shocking when most people learn this .
Contact our law firm today to learn how our legal team can help you plan for the future or deal with the legal demands associated with the passing of a loved one. Contact our law firm at 403-400-4092 or via email at Chris@NeufeldLegal.com to schedule a confidential initial consultation.
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