How to Involve Your Spouse in Estate Planning
You may have your car and your spouse might have their van. That’s all fine and dandy. Though, perhaps you want to start having a few talks. Questions concerning where the property goes to once one of you or both of you are gone might need to be asked. That mainly means dealing with Minnesota estate planning law and figuring out what the two of you can and cannot do.
In this article, you’ll find four sections to help you start and continue the conversation. A lot of it revolves around money, property, and what can be done about your possessions. So, be ready to ask them about whom they want to be your beneficiaries and how much of your income they’ll need. Marriage takes two people and estate planning might mean having both sides on board.
Providing for Them
When put into the hands of a caring spouse, estate planning can be centered around providing for your spouse and/or your offspring. That’s to say that it might involve a lot of mathematics. You’ll probably need to figure out money-related information like how much cash they’ll need when your income is no longer a part of their lives. Life insurance policies and making your spouse a main beneficiary to your assets are just two of the many steps that you can take to ensure their financial well-being.
Especially for newly married couples, chatting with your spouse about their spending habits might be the best foot that you can put forward. Money can be a highly emotional conversation for us humans. Still, the present isn’t the time to bring up old grudges. If you’re truly trying to figure how much money they might need to live off of, being honest and open about cash is key. Numbers only lie when somebody fails to tell the truth.
State Situation
Where you live may not be something that you can change. It’s something that may need to be discussed later on, but for now, you should consider what you can do in the state you’re living in. That is, state as in the United States. Always consult your lawyer before you finalize any estate planning decisions and make sure that you’re doing everything according to state law. States have the power to decide how your property is owned by you as a married couple. So, should you move from one state to another, your spouse may not have the same legal ownership as they did in the previous state.
It may prove beneficial for you to understand how your state deals with ownership. Minnesota, as an example, tends to divide property relative to what’s fair for both parties. It’s a concept known as equitable distribution. States which hold to this idea don’t automatically split shared property down the middle. Rather, they weigh out what each side needs and portions out the assets as such. Other factors such as custody and how long the couple was married can also impact the final outcome.
Involving Your Spouse in Estate Planning
Which side you go to for Thanksgiving might be an age old conversation as far as you can remember. And deciding where to send your assets might be more complex than which relative’s couch is more comfy for sleeping off turkey comas. The following can ring true for couples regardless of having kids or not. The husband, for example, might want to send his assets onto charity while the wife might want to pass down both his and her assets to her niece and nephew. You might not have to feed and clothe them, but you may want to talk about how much money you’re going to leave to your family.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that putting off the money talks with your spouse will help you. You may as well let the state redistribute all of your assets unless you can settle on who’ll be your beneficiaries. States don’t assume that you care about where your assets go unless you have the guts to, for example, create a will or place them inside a trust. Until you convince your spouse to agree with you, one of you compromises, or one side gives up, consider the state to be in charge of your assets once one of you departs from this world.
Read, Review, Revise
For estate planning documents that can be modified later on, it might be wise to read, review, and revise them. The frequency is up to you and your spouse. Don’t be worried about having to change the documents unless you feel the need. Read them over with new eyes and/or a second set of eyes, observing which parts are outdated. Treat these as though you were proofreading over any other document, but keep in mind that you should be more concerned about logical ramifications more than occasional spelling errors.
Your beneficiaries aren’t guaranteed to live long enough to inherit everything that you’ve promised them. Some that you originally included in your estate planning may no longer be with us. View these issues as opportunities to be more generous with your assets. One suggestion is that if your granddaughter is no longer alive, use the money that would have gone towards her college fund to help cure cancer. Chose to show love in dark times
Minnesota Estate Planning Lawyers
Whether you got married by a justice of the peace, a minister, a captain of a ship, or someone else, you might want to look into finding a third party once more. Having an estate planning lawyer help you and your spouse figure out your wills, trusts, and other things might be the thing you need to do first.
You and/or your spouse can dial 612-424-0398 and start the talks. With the help of the law firm of Flanders Law Firm LLC, you can solve your estate planning issues and get everything in order. Both parties might be able to get their needs met. It just might take a little help from someone outside looking in.
