Wills

Ducktale

Does anyone here have a will? (Or is anyone here a lawyer?) It's on our list to do before the baby. How did you go about doing it? How much did it cost? We don't have a ton of money or stuff so it should be pretty straightforward and easy as far as wills go. Should we wait until after the baby is born since it will be primarily for her?

twinklymama

I listen to Dave Ramsey and he advertised forms like that on legal forms.com, I think. (All one word, stupid auto correct) and we (I) have mine started, but need to finish up.

I think it cost like $50 or something for a bundle of forms. when im done, i think they just need to be notarized.

jknallen

We just found a lawyer that was the cheapest and did a basic will with him. Just one that says who our stuff goes to and who takes care of our kids if we can't. That was the main reason for doing it. Naming someone to take care of our children. It doesn't have specific names in it so we don't have to redo it ever used we wanted to be more specific with it.

foxslaw

Paging @Mommalawyer‌

winterbabe2015

We have ours completed. I printed the forms off of my state website. (Missouri) We had them notorized at the Secretary of States office. It didn't cost us anything. It was very straight forward. All property split equally between 3 children and guardianship of children to my brother with a back up guardian if he is unable.

monbon11

Thank you for posting this - it has also been on our list of things to do!

I looked into legalzoom.com, rocketlawyer.com, and WillMaker software from Quicken.  We haven't pulled the trigger just yet, but it seems people don't like the Quicken product because of update issues.  I think I am leaning towards rocketlawyer.com because you can do a free trial and it seems reasonably priced and basic.  Once complete I think you just need to get it notarized.

We aren't that complicated (read rich) either, but it would be good to have arrangements for baby custody, house, retirement funds, etc.

I would be interested in opinions from those who have completed the process!

Jensoprano82

We are getting ours done this month, and from what I understand you can include unborn and even future children in your will. The major point of discussion for us has been guardianship of our baby and his potential siblings. Dh's parents aren't able and mine are in their mid sixties, so the question becomes for us, do we make it my parents, running the risk that we could be burdening them with raising a child or children into their 80's, or do we move on to siblings? Only one sibling is married with kids of his own though

It's a lot to think about but I'm a "set it and forget it" kinda girl so we're just gonna get it nailed down.

Oh, we have a business attorney so we're probably going to spend several thousand on ours but that's because there is a multi sibling multi asset company to account for. Most young couples can get something from "legal zoom" or similar and get theirs done for under $100.

Don't forget to also include a living will element. (Your wants for what would happen if you are alive but incapacitated, etc) Nasty business but part of being a grown up.

monbon11

We were planning to do this before baby arrives because my husband is a worrier/planner and wants to have things in place in case something happens at the hospital (knock on wood).

smg2302

We are working on this.  We said after DD was born we would, and then never did.  Since we're done after 2 we figured we would after this LO is born.  A recommendation we got was to wait until after they had SSN's to make the ease of transition a little bit easier.

ConstanceGoodspeed

We attended a free estate planning seminar hosted by a local law office and a financial planner who specializes in estate planning. It would be $1500 to hire them to do our will, but attending the seminar showed us what we needed to add and make note of on the internet forms. We ended up paying $50 for a form online and $5 for notarization.

Also, if you are a STM you may need to update the wording on your papers to include your new LO.

monbon11

ConstanceGoodspeed said:

We attended a free estate planning seminar hosted by a local law office and a financial planner who specializes in estate planning. It would be $1500 to hire them to do our will, but attending the seminar showed us what we needed to add and make note of on the internet forms. We ended up paying $50 for a form online and $5 for notarization.

Also, if you are a STM you may need to update the wording on your papers to include your new LO.

Any specific a-ha moments?

Thank you!

MissEm15

Following!!

Nvywife

DH and I have a will mostly because he is military. We put ours together when DS was about 10 months old (I'm proud we did it back then since we were in our early 20's). Ours is by no means a basic one, due to DH job. I can't remember how much it cost. but it's worth the piece of mind knowing who gets N; and how our life insurance policies will be spent to benefit N. We will be editing ours to include L as soon as she arrives. I have multiple copies of our will. we keep one with us, MIL has one in her safe deposit box, then BIL has a copy since it mostly pertains to him.

stefanie_cbc

DH and I were just discussing this over lunch today. We really need to decide who will be guardians for the LO's.

Valentino2013

Following too

Alygohome

We don't have a will yet, we do have extensive life insurance that we took out when we got married and it is trusted to my mother to pay off our mortgage and the rest will be put into an account to be split by future children when they turn 19 as per the paperwork i filled out when we bought it. but we need to make a will, and change all our investment beneficiaries ect but I think we have to wait until after baby is born so we have a name/birthday?

Mommalawyer

Resident F15 lawyer here, its been over 10 years since I have actually prepared a will.  So, my information is possibly outdated and sparse. It can be easy and it can be complicated. It depends on your assets and what you want to do with everything. If you're leaving everything to your minor child, you might want to think about having a living trust too and have someone designated as the trustee (to ration out everything according to your wishes at your time frames). I think that a simple will and trust would be something that you could do on your own, using one of the websites that someone mentioned...... The more complicated stuff, you  might want to have someone prepare it for you. The place that I worked for, on the side, was a faith based organization and they had them prepared for you (by people like me)..... I could recommend them if you wanted, but it has been a very, very long time since I have been affiliated with them. Hope this helps.

Now, if anyone commits an act of violence against their SO during childbirth, or due to ragey hormones.... now I can certainly offer up some legal advice on that since that is what I do now!

Mommalawyer

foxslaw said:

Paging @Mommalawyer‌

On it! 

Irishcurls

We keep talking about this too. I think we've finally narrowed down guardians but need it all somewhere legal. I did have a friend suggest legalzoom or the like, if it's going to be straightforward. I had asked my dad awhile ago and he said anyone in his firm would charge an exorbitant fee for something we can do on our own. 

Maybe I'll take this time to browse legalzoom....

eta: Interesting. It looks like the will generated on legalzoom is separate for DH and I? Did I just not know this? Is this typical?

CogDis

@Jensoprano82‌
We've had a similar discussion regarding the idea of our aging parents as potential guardians. Ours are in their early 60s. We decided to go with siblings, not because of the potential burden on aging parents but actually instead because of the potential burden on our LO: with older guardians there is a good chance that our LO would lose them, too (either to death or incapacitation due to illness). That would mean they would then be possibly shifted to another guardian. Which we decided would be too traumatic seeing that the risk could be avoided by granting guardianship to one of our siblings. We're including visitation language regarding the grandparents in the guardianship language (and we plan to discuss it and have it all approved by our sibling).

I'm curious if you've come up with other ideas I haven't regarding this as it sounds like we're in a similar situations (regarding family make up).


I'm also following this post, as we haven't completed a will yet and cost effective would be great! Thanks @Ducktale‌ for the topic!

Ducktale

Thanks for the responses. Ok so I'm definitely going to do one of those online services. But now a lot of this has me thinking. I totally forgot about life insurance policies and having a trustee. We don't have great options for guardians/trustees in our families, so we have some thinking to do.

twinklymama

Ducktale said:

Thanks for the responses. Ok so I'm definitely going to do one of those online services. But now a lot of this has me thinking. I totally forgot about life insurance policies and having a trustee. We don't have great options for guardians/trustees in our families, so we have some thinking to do.

Def get on the life insurance for you and DH. Term is best. It's not all that expensive, either. Really, all you need is probably 20 year term, that way replacing your income (or the cost of someone doing what you do if you're a SAHM)is covered. Once the kids are out of school, its not a big deal to have the same amount of insurance since they can ideally support themselves.

RMSteele

I will say to be careful using one of the online services about making sure it is specific to your state. I don't know how wills work on those sites because H and I are serious slackers and still haven't done ours and our first LO is 3.5 now.. oops. BUT, my mom used legalzoom when putting together a separation agreement during my parents divorce and got kind of screwed. The judge that finalized the divorce didn't like some of the "verbiage" that legalzoom tacked onto the end of the document (that is required in other states) and would not include the document in the final divorce. 

I know that divorces can be messy and more complicated than a will so this may not be anything to worry about but I just wanted to share my (semi) personal experience. 

aggiebug

Would it be weird to have the guardian from one side of the family and the trustee from the other? or would you recommend them being the same? 

We started a will a long time ago but clearly things are a changing and we need to update it.I believe our will is through USAA whom we have accounts and insurance through. I am pretty certain we would both agree my sister and BIL would be best for guardianship, but FIL would probably be first choice for trustee.  It just seems like that could make things a little weird or disjointed. 

jmcgra06

I actually think a lot of people need 25 or 30 year term insurance at this point. If you have a goal of paying even part of your child's college education, dying 20 years from now without any benefit isn't going to help much. We hope to have at least one more after this LO, so 20 years from now LO3 would potentially still be in high school. Maybe is regional, but I don't know any 18 year olds who are financially independent.

michelle142

My Dad died at 59 suddenly with no will whatsoever.

It was a nightmare. If you don't have a will, get one ASAP.

DH and I met with a lawyer friend to do it. In WI, it's not required for it to be notarized (check your states requirements), but we went to a lawyer because we didn't trust the online ones to be thorough enough.

If you own property or have any sort of investments - no matter the net worth - a lawyer is a wise choice over the online options.

CogDis

@aggiebug‌ I personally feel that having a different person as trustee than guardian would place undue burden on the couple caring for your child. Nobody needs extra hoops to jump through to provide care to a child.

However, maybe there's a compromise? Some of the estate could be handled by another person as trustee while the finances necessary to raise your child could be left under the guardians of your LO.

Beth.1212

We had our estate documents done by a lawyer. (Includes will, trust, power of attorney,  health cary proxy, living will, and one other doc that I'm not remembering at the moment.) We ended up spending quite a bit, but unless our circumstances dramatically change this should be the only set we need. It'll need to be updated / reviewed periodically, of course, but there shouldn't be any major overhauls. Since it's a document that will be used someday, it seemed worth the investment to make sure it was done in the best way that it could be. 

@aggiebug We have a different trustee and guardian for our LO - one on my side and one on DH's side. Different tasks seem to suit different people's skill sets in our families. We actually like the idea of two people discussing how the assets are allocated - though both guardian and trustee are reasonable people and we're confident that they can work together well. 

fostersstudio

We downloaded a free basic template onlne. Just Google it for your state. Fill in the blanks and make any necessary changes, then get it notarized. We just used child (ren) instead of our baby's name since we hadn't decided when we got that paperwork done. And don't forget your medical power of attorney while you're at it.

mishka29

We did ours after DD1 was born. However, we did not name her specifically but left it general to refer to any children so we wouldn't have to update after DD2.

Jensoprano82

@CogDis‌ - I think we've decided 1) the able bodied parents, 2) the siblings with kids of their own, and then updating in five years when the younger siblings may be better options. I hadn't even really thought that much on the "losing a second set of parents".... Ugh. Too many things.

mali3

Personally I would never use an online program to do my will, it's too serious of a thing to take into my own hands. I got quotes a few weeks ago and found the cost for one person is about $500, for a couple about $750. This package includes wills, health care directives, and powers of attorney and 8 done by a lawyer.

DronkeyGal

I'm of the belief that everyone should get a will, living will, power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney ASAP! My dad is an estate attorney and created our documents for us - not for free though! He gave us a 20% family discount. Lol lawyers. Anyway, state laws are all very different and confusing. It's important to have an attorney create these documents for you, especially in NC. Any NC ladies that need these documents done, I'll be happy to refer you to my dad's firm. Send me a PM. I want to say it will cost you anywhere from $350-$500 depending on which documents you want.

wintersong139

winterbabe2015 said:

We have ours completed. I printed the forms off of my state website. (Missouri) We had them notorized at the Secretary of States office. It didn't cost us anything. It was very straight forward. All property split equally between 3 children and guardianship of children to my brother with a back up guardian if he is unable.

Sounds easy!

How thorough were your options, though? I feel like a lawyer would be helpful in even knowing what was important to include or what options other people have tried.

ETA: I should say we have not done this yet, but it is on our to do list!

brij2006

I will 2nd legalforms.com.  It's one Dave Ramsey endorses and is very reasonably priced.  

mrs&mrsk

We met a lawyer yesterday. For both wills, power of atty, living will and health care proxy it will be $400
We are going to have to make some decisions fast!
Our estate is going to be general with regards to #of kids and what we have- this could all change a lot in the coming years (it will be divided in % amongst all children we have as a couple)
As far as life insurance- 20 yr term should be ok bc our 401ks should be higher at the end and our mortgage should be low or paid off by then as well. I think you need full names and ssn to have beneficiaries on this so we will wait to update.