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We live in Florida and paid cash for the house. It is titled in both names (husband/wife).
Without a Trust, how would it pass to our children without a will or Trust?
The house is homesteaded.
florida uses a transfer on death deed so it is easy to avoid probate and keep it in personal name . here in ny we don't have that . it has to pass via will or trust here
We live in Florida and paid cash for the house. It is titled in both names (husband/wife).
Without a Trust, how would it pass to our children without a will or Trust?
The house is homesteaded.
why would you not have at least a will ? in states without transfer on death deeds the house gets probated with a will and transferred . with a trust there is no probate but you risk it being un protected if medicaid is needed .
playing around with this stuff on your own can have so many pitfalls . some courts will even reject a will if a staple was removed and re-stapled . many times it is not what is in the will as much as protocol at the signing of the will that can be important .
i know when we signed our wills at the lawyers office we were asked certain questions in front of witness's . questions like are we on any meds , did any heirs influence us , do we know what we are signing , etc.
if problems come up these can be very important questions . so i highly recommend see a specialist . there are no do overs for your heirs when things are not right and if courts and lawyers have to get involved all you did is pass most of your estate to them because you wanted to save a few bucks in legal fees .
if you think the cost of a good estate attorney is a lot , wait until your heirs see what free can cost . in our case the one missing sentence about predeceasing cost us 500k . 400k to buy out the step children from a business they were ear marked to get no part of and 100k in legal fees .
don't think for a minute that because your estate will not have a lot of assets you can scribble something on a napkin . your death can result in an accident suit , a wrongful death suit , a malpractice suit , etc . there can be money involved where there was none .
Last edited by mathjak107; 01-26-2018 at 04:27 AM..
For the record, Mathjak has brought up so much confusing (to me) stuff that I didn’t even think of, I found and made an appointment with a new lawyer. I’m just going to bite the bullet and pay the $1000 to get a new will and new medical directive and power of attorney.
I hate spending money. A lot. But I don’t want anyone to deal with a bunch of headaches or my money going to the state instead of family when I die.
good move . this is one area that can't be re-done . there is no such thing as re-writing poor verbiage , omissions or mistakes after your heirs have to deal with things .
as simple as a refinance was it went badly when the will read child and not only child . it cost us many times what a good estate attorney would have charged her parents instead of the cheap general practitioner they used . (a family member ).
i almost made that mistake myself when i wanted to do my own and have an estate attorney check it . luckily they wouldn't do it .
it turned out when we went to do our new wills that we had a serious estate tax issue here in ny and i never knew it .
at that time we were over ny's limit , only the overage was not what gets taxed . go over by more than 5% and you lose the entire 1 million exclusion .
i had no idea about that ,so we got special trusts called disclaimer trusts . cost us 4800 for all we needed but had we not gone , the taxes would have been insane . today new york tracks the federal leval so we are good to go without those trusts being needed .
principal residences are not counted as assets by Medicaid to the extent the applicant's equity in the home is less than $560,000, with the states having the option of raising this limit to $840,000 (figures are adjusted annually for inflation; these are for 2017). but this is only for homes held in personal name .
so if you are applying for medicaid those dollars do not count for the spend down required to qualify for medicaid .
.
Would that apply to a person who is not married? The house can be keep if no one is living there in a nursing home situation?
In Canada, a lawyer preparing a will files a copy of it with a provincial government registry, so there is always a record of it. I found it rather surprising that in the USA, attorneys don't even bother to xerox a copy of it for themselves.
We live in Florida and paid cash for the house. It is titled in both names (husband/wife).
Without a Trust, how would it pass to our children without a will or Trust?
The house is homesteaded.
Assume you own it as husband and wife. At first to die it would go to the surviving spouse. This happens at the moment of death. No paperwork. When the second dies it goes to your children equally but only because it is homestead property. Again at the moment of death. If the children want to sell the property a title insurance company may want some paperwork done but the house is owned by the children. I think if you left the house by will to someone else it would still pass to the children. Homesteads can be very complicated so I would check with an attorney or at least the registrar of deeds for your county. Now what happens to the furniture etc inside the home? I think that goes by the will and if none by state law.
A trust is probably not needed but you should have wills, power of attorney (very very important) and a health directive. You should find a Florida elder attorney to do these.
I have no expertise in this area, just an opinion.
florida uses a transfer on death deed so it is easy to avoid probate and keep it in personal name . here in ny we don't have that . it has to pass via will or trust here
Any reference you can give me to the law? Two estate attorney's have told me that this deed in not valid in Florida.
Are you thinking of a "Lady Bird" deed or more formally an enhanced life estate deed. This deed would meet your objective but it has some fine points so I would use a skilled attorney. Their are some state laws that govern the deed regardless of the language in the deed and this could cause problems if you wanted to sell the property etc. You also have to be careful of the wording so you do not lose the homestead exemption.
why would you not have at least a will ? in states without transfer on death deeds the house gets probated with a will and transferred . with a trust there is no probate but you risk it being un protected if medicaid is needed .
playing around with this stuff on your own can have so many pitfalls . some courts will even reject a will if a staple was removed and re-stapled . many times it is not what is in the will as much as protocol at the signing of the will that can be important .
i know when we signed our wills at the lawyers office we were asked certain questions in front of witness's . questions like are we on any meds , did any heirs influence us , do we know what we are signing , etc.
if problems come up these can be very important questions . so i highly recommend see a specialist . there are no do overs for your heirs when things are not right and if courts and lawyers have to get involved all you did is pass most of your estate to them because you wanted to save a few bucks in legal fees .
if you think the cost of a good estate attorney is a lot , wait until your heirs see what free can cost . in our case the one missing sentence about predeceasing cost us 500k . 400k to buy out the step children from a business they were ear marked to get no part of and 100k in legal fees .
don't think for a minute that because your estate will not have a lot of assets you can scribble something on a napkin . your death can result in an accident suit , a wrongful death suit , a malpractice suit , etc . there can be money involved where there was none .
Yes, it can be very tricky.
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