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Write beneficiary ssn

okay welcome back today I'm joined by day my friend attorney Matthew Underwood Matt operates Underwood legal LLC a boutique estate planning and elder law firm in Madison Wisconsin and Matt thank you for joining us today thanks for having me today John so Matt I have a good question for you that just came in recently and here it is it's from Fond du Lac Wisconsin and the writer asked the following can I list a beneficiary in a will without their social security number good question so can you list a beneficiary in a will without a social security number absolutely when we're naming a beneficiary and a will that you know we have absolutely need to be able to identify that person so I'd recommend you know a full legal name with a middle initial even but I would encourage you not to put a social security number in a will and I would go strong to say you never put a social security number in a will because wills become public record once the person making the will passes away so anything that you thought might have been your private wishes that you put in your will all of that becomes public when you pass away so in the the other thing is you know if you put a beneficiary a social security number in the will and you pass away again that becomes public record and now that beneficiary is going to have to live with the fact that their social security number is out in the public record so we want to avoid that at all costs now if you're working with a life insurance company you know financial company and you want to set up a beneficiary on one of your policies or one of your accounts oftentimes the financial company will ask for the beneficiary information including social security number and usually that's okay because those beneficiary forms aren't public record that's just a contract that you have between yourself and the insurance or financial company so that would be fine so again you can put that in a beneficiary form if asked by the financial company but do not put a social security number in the will so that's really you know Tom and you can chime in here but that's where I wouldn't recommend that people look at doing trust planning because when we do trust planning trusts do not end up in in court at all trust our private documents so when people have concerns about privacy you know or asset protection even that's where we're really looking at trust instead of wills but I don't know your thoughts on that Tom yeah exactly Matt that was a great answer I have never put a social security number in a will just for that reason you don't want that personally identifiable information and you're likely your loved one your heirs out there after your death because at that point...