The Rural Voice, 2004-03, Page 49tree is totally wiped out. Many
couples will come up with a
distribution plan that involved both
sides of the family (which I will
touch on in more detail below). If you
or your spouse head in that direction,
choosing an alternate executor from
each side of the family would make
sense (and again, it helps ensure that
your children following your death
have both sides of the family
involved in their upbringing).
Remember that your choice of
guardian for your children is not
binding on the court. The court will
do what is found to be in the best
interests of the children at the time of
your death. All things being equal,
your wishes should be respected and
accordingly they are worth setting
forth in a will document.
The above outline suffices for
most family's estate plans. The only
thing to be considered beyond the
foregoing, for the average family, is
the question of what happens to their
estate in the event of a large scale
disaster where, as is mentioned
above, the entire branch of the family
tree is wiped out. That is, no spouse,
no children, no grandchildren, etc. In
that hopefully highly unlikely
scenario, we recommend to most
couples that their wills read the same.
I suggest that they look at the pot to
be divided in that circumstance and
first agree on who should get to say
about what portion. Many couples
will just go half and half but in some
circumstances, a different split might
seem appropriate.
The beauty of coming up with
agreement on the split first is that
each spouse should then get to say
what they want to have happen with
"their share" without concern for the
reaction of their partner. Many people
get a bit stuck at this point in the
process but we certainly encourage
them to not get totally stuck. The
general concept of taking this
approach is to avoid a circumstance
where one side of the family or the
other is totally cut out in a joint
disaster just over the issue of who
either died first or was deemed to
have died first in cases where it is not
clear who outlived whom (as is often
the case with transportation
accidents).
If you are taking on the task of
doing your own will, please
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