My spouse and I are contemplating buying a home together. We are unsure what the implications of such a purchase would be and how they would impact our estate planning documents. If we do end up buying the home, would our wills still be valid? Would we need to change or update our documents? Is it expensive to make the changes? We don’t know if it’s better to wait to implement our estate planning documents until we know for sure if we will be buying or not.
As I am sure I have preached in prior columns, EVERYONE should have a Last Will and Testament. If you don’t write your own will, the state writes one for you. Since the process of purchasing a home can take weeks, if not months, it is more critical that you put a will in place if you have not already done so.
The purchase of your home or the acquisition or disposition of other assets should not necessarily impact any documents that you put in place. Although everyone should continue to review their will annually to make sure it suits their needs, wishes, and tax concerns, the acquisition or disposition of assets in and of itself does not necessarily necessitate changes. If, however, you left a specific bequest of real property to someone, and later sold or transferred that property to someone else, then that specific bequest in the will would lapse and the person would not receive anything. Another situation can be where you leave “all the real property and improvements I own at my death” to one person, but then acquire other real property with a different person and you would like your interest in that property to pass to that person at your death. In that event, a change to your will would be required.
Putting the documents in place is more important than waiting until the decision to buy the home (in my humble opinion!) Usually, if you return to the lawyer who first drafted your documents, the fee to change your document should not be as much as it costs to generate them in the first place.
Alison Arden Besunder is the founding attorney of the Law Offices of Alison Arden Besunder P.C., where she assists new and not-so-new parents with their estate planning needs. Her firm assists clients in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. You can find Besunder on Twitter
@estatetrustplan and on her website at www.besunderlaw.com.
