Lawyer or Legal Zoom for Mom & Pop Will?

[jean_ji]

We used a lawyer to set up wills, dPOA and advanced health directives. We have one son and his family, so everything is straightforward. Even so, we want to get it right as much as we can. Things other than a will can cause problems as we learned.

We went through probate after my Dad died because he had one bank CD over $50k in his name only, which triggered probate in Indiana. All other assets and accounts were in both parent’s names. He either opened that CD after his will was made, or erroneously told the lawyer everything was in both names.

We just finished probate on Mom’s estate, which was only her bank account after a stay in a memory unit. Since there was no beneficiary on her account, it took 11 months to finalize. We paid a lawyer twice for probate on our parents estate because of simple errors and things we didn’t know about.

With the above in mind, today we added our son to our bank accounts as a beneficiary, so he has access to our money after we die with no probate. He was already a secondary beneficiary on my IRA and DH’s 401k.

Next on the list is changing our house deed to a Lady bird deed. It’s the same as a transfer on death deed, but legal in Florida. 5 states have Lady Bird Deeds and 16 states have TOD deeds. Upon our death, the deed transfers to our son automatically without going through probate. It all looks advantageous, but we will see our lawyer about it.

We learned a few things the hard way since my parent’s died. We want things to go as easy as possible for our son. Money spent by us for a will and sound legal advice may save him from paying for another lawyer to straighten things out after we are gone. We are doing the best we can.