Industry sign banking california last will and testament mobile
if you're like most people you know you should have a will but you've never gotten around to it and I mean that bit about most people fewer than one-third of adults in America have a will and it's not just the young adults one-half of the 55 an overcrowded that still doesn't have a will or any other state planning so the good news is you can stop feeling like everyone's got together and you don't the bad news is a lot of people don't have it together so let's fix that and let's do it today in about two minutes I'm going to show you in detail how to get a completely free completely valid will for California residents it's called the California's statutory will form I'll also show you how to get a completely free completely valid durable power of attorney in advance health care directive now if you just want to link to the actual forms you can find them in the video description and the first comment down below if you want a detailed walkthrough on how to fill out your will form keep watching after that I'll have some discussion of what your will does and what it doesn't do and how it might not be exactly what you think it is I need to cover two short points before we get started first it's important to realize that if you don't live in California these forms probably won't work for you you're free to stick around but don't print and sign these and think that your estate planning is taken care of it won't be there are a handful of other states with statutory will forms I think it's Maine Michigan New Mexico and Wisconsin but I don't practice law in any of those states so I can't tell you anything about them for those of you from California you can proceed with confidence as an attorney in California I practiced for years creating and administering wills and trusts I sat down with hundreds of clients to help put together plans to take care of their families after they were gone now I'm employed as an attorney for a California state government agency so I'm not trying to get any more estate planning clients that means I have the freedom to give away everything and that's what I'm doing here I can promise you that this video will not end by asking you to buy anything a free will is free here now I will take some time at the end to explain the limitations of the free documents and when it might make sense to sit down with an attorney and have a consultation but I am NOT that attorney I just want to get this information into as many hands as possible so the 20 million adults in California with no estate planning at all you can at least get some basic protection in place here's the second thing I have to give a very lawyer-like disclaimer and I'm sorry you have to listen to it but it's important so please do a lawyer's job is to give a legal advice to a client about the clients specific situation a lawyer studies the law so that he can help a client know how the law applies to that client specifically sadly I don't know you and I don't know your situation that means this video is not and cannot be legal advice I'll talk about general scenarios here but I have no way of knowing how nearly they match your situation I hope you take this video and you'll learn from it but realize that there might be some reason you don't fit the general scenario if you have any questions please consult an attorney you can sit down with you and get to know your specifics and give you a specific advice that will help with your specific situation there that's out of the way let's get on to the free will so California has had a statutory will form it's right here since the 1980s it's changed several times since then but the general idea is stay the same the state legislature wanted to give people an easy alternative to not having any estate plan at all they basically promised to everyone in California hey if you print this out and you fill it correctly and you sign it the right way you have a witnessed according to the instructions this will work in California as your will after you die you can see the entire text of the statutory will form in Section six two four zero of the California Probate Code or you can just download it from one of the links below there's a detailed walkthrough coming up and you'll want to have the will form and a pen in hand so you can fill it out today right now and while you're downloading the statutory will form please also download the forms for a uniform statutory power of attorney and in an advanced health care directive your will kicks in when you die but statistics say that most people actually become disabled at some point before they die it might be illness or it might be injury or it might just be AIDS but there will likely come a point when you need someone else to make important decisions on your behalf or even just assign some papers that require your signature but you can't either because you're physically or you're mentally unable to sign them Do It Yourself that's what the power of attorney and the advanced health care directive are for I'll have some separate videos for those because otherwise this will get really long but you should definitely print them out and get those taken care of get them ready as well I'll see you back here after you have the will and the other forms printed out go ahead and pause the video to download the forms and print them okay a continuing here with the assumption you've printed the California statutory will form and we're ready to talk about it to make this super easy I'll put the form up on my screen and we'll look at it together okay this is the actual PDF file that I've downloaded and hopefully you have downloaded as well have it in front of you with a pen and we can fill it out right now the first two pages are questions and answers when some really brief instructions I'm not going to go through these now I hope that you do there's interesting information on there and things that you should know page 2 when we get to page 2 we see they're sent to some instructions here at the very bottom um these are very simple but they have to be followed very carefully first read the will read the whole thing first it's arranged kind of in a backwards way and we'll get into that as we look at the wheel pages themselves fill in the blanks only fill in the blanks don't write anything else on the on the wheel don't cross anything out and don't fill in all the blanks because there's some that you probably won't want to fill in and number three date and sign the wheel there instructions for how you do that and how your witnesses thereafter sign it at the end here so we'll go out to the first page of the actual will itself and I'm gonna make this just a little bit bigger so we can see it better there it is so the first page very first thing everyone needs to do is print your full name you do this in the box right up at the top here you just print your name whatever your full name is the first Clause says this is my will I revoke all prior wills and codicils so if you have any wills that you made you know in the past those all are revoked when you create a new will you can't have more than one will that's you know enforceable at any given time the first section of the will we're going to get to is what you give away to who and that's in paragraphs two three four and five but we're actually gonna skip right down to five and I'll explain why in just a minute so skipping down to paragraph five says the balance of my assets so if we look at this except for the specific gifts made in paragraphs 2 3 & 4 above I give the balance of my assets as follows so here in paragraph 5 you can say I want to give everything everything I have to certain people and these choices are already predefined for you choice one is I want to leave everything to my spouse or my domestic partner and this has to be a domestic partner who's registered with a California Secretary of State not just somebody you're living with or if not because they don't live as long as I do then to my descendants and my descendants means my children and if any of those children are Priya ceased that portion would fall down to their children if there are any so you can say in choice one everything to my spouse or domestic partner and if not because they don't live as long as I live then to my children choice 2 is nothing to my spouse or domestic partner go ahead and just give it all to my descendants my children and possibly their children choice 3 is everything to a specific person and you write that person's name down here on the line below choice 3 and choice for is everything equally among the following people so you can write any number of names on those lines there and your property your state will be split equally among them the way you actually make the choice is by signing in one of these boxes so you can only sign in one box if you sign in more than one box if you don't sign in any box then the court doesn't know what you meant to do and your assets are given away according to law not according to this will so choose either choice 1 and sign this box choice to sign this box 3 in this box or 4 in the choice for box that's how you say I'm going to give away everything to these people now if you want to make specific gifts if you want to say give your home to somebody other than those people that you named here in in paragraph 5 you can do that if you want to give your tangible stuff you know all the things you own to somebody you can do that in paragraph 3 if you want to give specific cash gifts say $10,000 to this organization or or you know $1,000 to each of my grandkids that I'm going to name here you can do that in paragraph 4 so paragraph five says the balance and if you haven't taken any parts of your estate out in paragraphs two three and four the balance is just everything for a lot of people what they do is leave two three and four blank and just make a choice in the paragraph five balance of my assets portion but if you do want to make a specific gift of your residence or something like that well go up and see how that would work paragraph two here says a specific gift of my personal residence so if you don't want this going with the same people who you have in paragraph five then you either choose choice one two three or four these are the same choices as before and you sign your name on the box and if you need to write somebody's name down here and choice three or four you do that that's how to give your home away to somebody who's not the same people you chose in paragraph five if you look in paragraph three you can give away your stuff so this is automobiles your household your personal affects you know the things that you own all of those things you can say you know what I'm leaving everything else to my kids but I want all the things I own to stay with my spouse or domestic partner and you would choose choice one for that or you could say you know I'm giving everything else to this organization that I really believe in but I want to give my personal things to my family and that would be maybe your children so it could be choice two you could also choose choice through your choice for these are the same choices again through all of these paragraphs two three four and five but this is to give away the stuff that you own and then finally in paragraph four you can give away specific gifts of cash if you want so you can say oh this person or this charity will get a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or whatever you write the amount of the gift in your write the person or the organization's name you sign your name this box right here makes the gift so you have to put all three of these things in who it goes to how much it is and then you sign it to actually make the gift and you can do that for up to five boxes here that's as many as fit in the California statutory will form so a lot of people like I said we'll just use paragraph five so I'll say everything goes to either my spouse or my kids or some other people and you is the appropriate choice for that some people will leave the home to someone different or the tangible stuff to someone different or make cash gifts beyond the balance of the assets and that's two three and four if you want to use them we'll come down now to paragraph six this is actually probably the most important paragraph for people who have minor children because your stuff will eventually get to your kids if you have minor children but who you have take care of them is a is a choice that you want to have some say in this is when you nominate a guardian of any children you have under age 18 anybody who's a child of yours and under 18 when you die and the child doesn't have a living parent you can choose a first choice for someone to raise the child a second choice and a third choice and people are given the option to be that guardian in that order it may be that your first choice sale dies before you or maybe that person is just a terrible time for them to take on the raising of some new children whatever it is you have three choices there so that if your first choice can't do it then somebody else can write the name of your first choice for guardian your second choice for guardian and then your third choice for guardian for any minor children you have and if you don't have any minor children you don't have to fill any of this in you can leave six completely blank now you can use paragraph seven to make some decisions about your young children as well I've already named in paragraph six the guardians of the person that is people who are raised any minor children you have this allows you to name either the same person or someone else as the custodian of assets or the guardian of the property the guardian of inheritance that you're leaving for these young children and you can say here that as soon as they turn 18 they get their inheritance that's the default if you want to choose some other age then you can actually say up to age 25 you know what I when I was an 18 year old I would have squandered my inheritance I don't want my 18 year old child to do the same let's wait until they're a little more mature right that age down in this box here so whatever age it is that you want your kids get their inheritance outright and you're right here in these boxes your choices for the custodian of assets or the person who will take care of the assets and hold on to them until they're given to your children as they reach the a that you specified this can be the same person that you choose for paragraph six the guardian of the person or it can be a different person when you get to paragraph eight here this is the choice that most people think of when they're thinking about a will is who will be my executor who will be the person who manages the estate and goes to court and hires a lawyer if needed in the real estate agent if needed and sells the property and eventually gives it out to the people who I named as beneficiaries your executor can be one of your beneficiaries but doesn't need to be your executor is compensated for the work they do so they don't have to be a beneficiary they can actually draw a compensation from the estate under California probate law so you'll name your first choice second choice and third choice for the person who manages the entire estate and eventually gives it to the beneficiaries after it's been through the probate process and paragraph nine is the bond requirement so a court will frequently require a bond that is insurance basically that your executor has to by saying if I behave badly and make off with some of the assets of the estate then this bondus insurance policy is in place to pay the beneficiaries if you trust the person you're choosing as your executor you can actually say that bond isn't can be required I don't want my estate to be used up paying a bond I want instead to just go directly to my beneficiaries and so you can sign in this box saying no bond shall be required and that allows your executor to serve without a bond the court still requires accountings and overlooks things but that insurance policy isn't in place this last page of the will is one that has to be done just right or the rest of the selections you made don't matter this is where you sign and where your witnesses sign the will let's ju
t go through it sentence by sentence notice at the top you must sign this will in the presence of two adult witnesses you have to have them there in the room with you as you sign it so the witnesses must sign their names in your presence and before you sign you must read following sentence this sounds a little bit silly just do it just read the sentence the sentences this is my will I asked the persons who sign below to be my witnesses so you get in the room with two people who are adults who are not receiving any assets under the will and you say will you be my witnesses and they say sure and you sit down with them and you say okay this is my will I ask the persons who sign below to be my witnesses and you take your pen and you put the date and you put the city while you're signing and then you write your signature in the box that says signature of maker of will so you've signed your will now the two adults who are signing must read the following Clause before signing will read it now each of us declares under penalty of perjury under the laws of the state of California that the following is true and correct a on the date written below the maker of this will declared to us that this instrument was the makers will and requested us to act as witnesses to it so that's why you had to read that sentence of it at the top to make sure that that was communicated to your witnesses be we understand this as the makers will see the maker signed this will in our presence all of us being present at the same time D we now at the makers request and in the makers presence sign below as witnesses e we believe the maker is of sound mind and memory F we believe that this will was not procured by duress Menace fraud or undue influence G the maker is age 18 or older and H each of us is now age 18 or older is a competent witness and resides at the address set forth after his or her name then one of those witnesses will date it here's the date here's the year each of them will sign it in the box then print their name and print their address under it that's all there is but this has to be done right if you don't say the words up here if you don't say this is my will ask the persons who signed below to be my witnesses then they can't declare under penalty of perjury that you told them that if you don't date it and put the city and sign it and they don't fill this out you know as it's set out here then you will can be called in a question later you don't want that just follow the procedure do it very carefully okay quick recap let's go to the very top all right you print your full name at the very top you may choose to use either choice one two three or four for your specific gifts in paragraphs two three and four that is to give away your home your tangible personal property and any cash gifts or you may choose just to leave some or all of those blank and go to five you make a choice by signing your name in the box next to that choice this top one is choice one second one is choice two etc if you're choosing three or four you need to write the names that apply two three and four you get down to number six paragraph six you choose the guardian who raises your minor children paragraph seven could be the same or different people you choose the custodian of assets you choose at what age your children can receive their inheritance you choose your executor the one who manages the whole estate you choose if bond will be required or if not for your executor and then you sign according to the instructions on the signing page that's all there is to it it's a pretty simple will it doesn't do everything but if you do this it will do exactly what you ask it to do and that's that if you've printed and fill out the will you just need to sign it in front of two witnesses or at least eighteen years old are not receiving anything from the will those two people watch you sign they'll sign themselves as witnesses and you'll have a valid California will congratulations you are in better shape than most people in California but let's talk for a minute about what that means I know it's tempting to sign off right now but I hope you don't when I would sit down with clients to do this I'd spend at least an hour with them because there's some important things they needed to know it's important for you to know too it's important to understand exactly what you have what you don't have in your will first let's take some time to debunk or clarify common misconceptions about your will and then I'll briefly answer a question that's especially relevant to California should you have a will or should you have a living trust first some misconceptions and my estate climbing practice people came in with a lot of interesting ideas about wills and trusts and that's understandable most people have no relevant experience they've never been in charge of administering an estate more than two thirds of them haven't even made their own will so in case you've picked up one or more of these let's straighten them out here first if I don't have a will when I die the government will take everything related but more specific my we'll let's me avoid estate taxes third my will keeps my state out of probate court fourth my will keeps my kids from fighting over my estate fifth my will transfers all my assets to the designated beneficiary seven my will has to be typed and notarized eight I should keep my will my safety deposit box at the bank and nine I don't need a living trust because I have a will so let's address those one by one some will be super fast and a few will take some more time first if I don't have a will when I die the government takes everything I hear that a lot and it's very rarely true if you don't have a will you don't get to choose who receives the property of your estate but it's usually not the government of California law includes a whole family tree of people who are entitled to receive your estate before the state itself steps in and takes over anyone even remotely related to you as a better claim than the state does however if you don't choose your beneficiaries in a will or trust and there really is no one even remotely related to you who steps up to claim your state as our inheritance it has to go somewhere in the state steps in and takes it second my will lets me avoid estate taxes now this simply isn't true you will have no effect on the taxes you'll open when you die but in 2020 this doesn't actually matter to many people because almost no one actually also state taxes the federal estate tax exemption that you give over eleven million dollars before any estate tax kicks in at all what does that mean that means that fewer than one of the thousand people who died will owe any estate tax and while some states do have an inheritance tax there isn't one in California so most estates don't know any tax except the normal income tax that the estate pays if it earns income before the assets are distributed that income taxes do whether you have a will or not there's no escaping the taxman the take away is most people never have to worry about estate taxes if your estate is large and complex enough to require tax planning don't watch this go talk to an attorney who can walk you through how the line directs with your specific situation the third misconception is my will keeps my estate out of probate court and this is absolutely not true in fact what your will does is get your estate into probate court on your own terms if you have no will and all your estate goes to probate and the law chooses who gets to administer the estate and who receives the assets of the estate if you have a will your estate goes to probate court and your will says who acts as your executor and who your beneficiaries are but you still go to probate court and a judge still oversees the administration if you want to avoid probate court entirely there are lots of ways to arrange that using a trust or using transfer on death Tools or some of each but that's a conversation you should have with an estate planning attorney who can give you specific advice about the best ways to transfer your specific property yeah another misconception might will keeps my kids from fighting over my estate I'm sorry to say that isn't true either there's nothing you can do to keep your kids from fighting while you're alive this doesn't change when you've died you can however do a few things which decrease the chances of certain types of fights just making a Willis's start some people also write a letter to their children to explain their decisions and affirm their love and affection and ask that the kids try to get along during this difficult time another thing would be to include a no-contest clause in your will in no contest clause as a provision that automatically disinherits somebody who brings a certain type of lawsuit against your chosen executor now the California statutory will form doesn't include this clause if you're concerned about a huge family feud coming out of your estate it would be wise to talk to an attorney about the best way to mitigate that in your estate planning in the end though we can put incentives in place to behave well but we can't ever force our kids whether we're alive or whether we're did to behave the way we wish they would the fifth common misconception is that my will transfers all my assets to the designated beneficiaries now this is a really interesting one because it seems reasonable and it could be true but it usually isn't there are many kinds of property that include a named death beneficiary on the title of the property life insurance is a common example you might own a policy and you pay the annual premiums while you're alive but there's a name the beneficiary on the policy who actually gets the cash after you're dying but life insurance isn't the only example your pension or your retirement account probably has a named death beneficiary as well your bank accounts or investment accounts might have one if you hold title to real estate or other property and joint tenancy the surviving owner automatically becomes the sole owner when you die there are other ways that this happens as well your will catches any property that doesn't have its own name to death beneficiary on title and passes that property along the beneficiaries of your will but property that includes a name to death beneficiary as part of its title actually transfers outside of your estate so it's really important to go back every once in a while and make sure that anything you own with the name death beneficiary has the names you intend I've had clients who found that an ex-spouse or deceased sibling is named a beneficiary or though there simply is no beneficiary named at all this happens frequently when companies have gone from paper records to computer records and something gets lost if you're making a will today take some time to check and make sure that your name beneficiaries are correct you can usually do it online or with a short phone call number six my will has to be typed and notarized now it's true that in some places a will can be notarized but not in California your will should be signed by you in the presence of two witnesses and then signed by them with the proper witness attestations as used in the California statutory form will and that's for typing it's not a requirement at all you could simply write out your entire will longhand but the California statutory foil includes pre-printed language which makes it easier to use so you can just write in your selections on the form and it'll be valid number seven I should keep my will in my safety deposit box at the bank a lot of people do this you should keep your will somewhere safe the potential problem with keeping in a safety deposit box is that some banks make it really difficult for anyone except the court appointed executor to get into a safety deposit box and your executor will need to file your will with the court to become the executor so there are ways around this but no one wants to spend time fighting with the bank just after a spouse or a parent or some other loved person has died it's a difficult time already so we keep our estate planning documents safely in our home office and they're scanned copies available for relevant people you should choose a secure place that works for you and your fan wherever that is but keep in mind that the safety deposit box has some drawbacks and finally I don't need a living trust because I have a will now this one takes a little more discussion a will and a living trust seem to do the same basic things but they do them in entirely different ways and one might be better than the other for you a living trust can do more than just a will kin a will kicks in when you die a living trust can plan for a time when you're incapacitated or when you need some help taking care of things but you're still breathing a trust can be closely tailored for your specific needs while it will mostly just answers the basic questions it's how you tell the probate court who you want to act as your executor who you want to take care of your minor children if you have anyone you die and who you want to be your beneficiaries but many people want to avoid probate court altogether and usually it's for three reasons first probate court is a very public process anyone who wants to can see your will find out who received what and listen in on the discussions between the lawyers on the judge second probate can take a long time in California it's almost impossible to get through probate court in less than seven months and that's if everything goes perfectly usually it takes longer before anything can be distributed from the estate third and most importantly for most people probate court especially in California can be really expensive there are court filing fees and probate appraisal fees and newspaper publication fees and other costs that usually come out to between 1500 or $2,000 for the estate and then there are the bigger costs and those are attorney and executor fees those are calculated as a percentage of the estate for an example an estate worth $300,000 which in California might be a modest home in a small bank account the attorney fees could be $9,000 on that and the executor also has the option to take $9,000 in compensation for administering the estate with the other $2,000 and cost that's as much as $20,000 in fees on a $300,000 estate many other states use different ways to calculate attorney an executor compensation but California statutory Commission law can make probate court pretty expensive pretty quickly because of that for a lot of people that might make sense at some point to pay for a living trust which can avoid probate court entirely so their family is left with a larger percentage of the estate a trust is not something I'd recommend as a DIY project though it would require sitting down with an attorney and depending on the way you're at in the state it might cost between 1,500 and 3,000 dollars even more than that in some places that's not a lot compared to the eventual probate fees but it can be a lot of cash to come up with for estate planning right now a living trust is also more complex than a very simple will and it might require more updates and maintenance which usually carries some additional cost - on the other hand the California steps charge will form is free it's right here you can print it out and use it and fill it out today and even if you do plan on getting a living trust someday finishing a will now might be a responsible and prudent choice and that's as much as we're gonna cover now I'll have links below to much briefer walkthroughs of the durable power of attorney in the advanced health care directive thank you for participating I hope it's been helpful I hope you've got some planning done take care now
