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Big Picture Retirement®

9 Steps If You Expect Your Will To Be Contested

Big Picture Retirement®

Devin Carroll

News, Business News, Investing, Business

4.7546 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2019

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is it possible that your heirs might disagree with your will? There are many things you can do to reduce or even eliminate fights after you are gone.

In this week's episode, elder lawyer John Ross talks about the dos and don'ts of writing a will when you think there might be conflict between your survivors.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://bigpictureretirement.com/115

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The Big Picture Retirement Show does not provide specific tax, legal, or financial advice.

0:05.1

Listeners are encouraged to seek out their own advisors in these areas.

0:12.9

Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Big Picture Retirement Show. This is the podcast for anyone who is planning for or living in retirement.

0:20.6

I'm Devin Carroll and John Ross is back

0:23.1

with me today. Hey John. Howdy.

0:28.3

So John, you are going to talk about some contested will situations. Yeah, I was thinking about

0:35.6

something I get questions about all the time, and I thought,

0:38.4

well, you know, if people are anticipating a contest in some form, you know, maybe they just got that

0:46.6

one family member that they know it's going to be a problem. Yeah. Or maybe there's a disproportionate

0:51.7

distribution coming, you know, but for whatever reason, you anticipate a fight. A lot of times you can see these coming down the road, too. You don't have to wait until death happens and then someone throws up a stink. You just know that... That's right, especially if you're being honest. I visited with a lady. She had brought her granddaughter in to talk about doing some powers of attorney and stuff. She's got two kids. And when we were talking about the powers of attorney, I asked her when we're appointing people. I said you got a couple of options, but it depends almost entirely on the relationship between the people that you're appointing. So really, before I get into that, do the two kids, do your two

1:29.4

sons? Do they get along? Do they communicate well? And she's like, oh, yeah, the granddaughter's

1:34.1

shaking her head. She's like, no, they do not. They don't talk to each other. They don't get along.

1:39.4

And one of them is her dad, right? So, I mean, she knows. Yeah, right. But mom is just not being honest.

1:45.9

She's, she's telling me what she wants it to be and not what it is. And so, yeah, you're right.

1:51.7

If you take an honest assessment, then yeah, you often will, will anticipate the potential fight that's coming.

2:00.7

Yeah, it's one of those things you can see coming, though. Yeah, most of the time. No, there are some situations that are complete surprises. Well, yeah, I guess so. I guess so. But especially if you're the person that gets the surprise in the wheel, right? If you find out that, hey, I'm only getting 5% when my siblings are getting 50%.

2:19.9

Well, that doesn't seem quite fair.

2:21.3

Well, and that and where somebody's life has gone downhill.

2:26.4

Right.

2:26.8

They've hidden it from everybody else.

2:29.2

Everybody doesn't know that they're in financial straits.

2:31.8

And so they're the ones that then are unduly influencing

...

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