If you are married, you and your spouse can choose to create separate estate plans, or you could alternately create a joint will or living trust. The right choice will depend on the circumstances and your ultimate intentions.
A separate arrangement can make more sense if both parties have children from previous marriages and they are entering the union with their own resources.
When partners have accumulated most of their assets jointly and they want to leave the property to one another, a shared approach can be preferable, and this will be our focus in this post.
Joint Will
It is possible to create a joint will with your spouse, but estate planning attorneys do not recommend this course of action. If you go this route, you and your spouse would leave everything to one another, and you would make your children the final inheritors.
The surviving partner would not be able to change the terms of the trust or dissolve it after the death of their spouse. This is supposed be a good thing in theory because it protects the inheritances that are going to be transferred to the children after the death of the survivor.
If this stipulation was not in place, a surviving spouse could get remarried and have different ideas about the way the resources should be used. On the one hand, this makes sense as a protective mechanism, but the loss of control can be problematic.
The surviving spouse may want to provide a child with an early inheritance to purchase a home or establish a business, but the terms of the trust may prevent them from doing so.
There may be no way to provide safeguards for an adult child that turns out to be a poor money manager, and a home sale may not be possible. These are a few of the scenarios that can enter the picture, but there are others.
Another negative with a joint will is the fact that it would be admitted to send us a message to request a consultation appointment, and we can be reached by phone at 860-548-1000.
Mr. Nirenstein is licensed to practice before the courts of the State of Connecticut and the United States District Court. He is a member of the Connecticut and Hartford County Bar Associations, and the Estate and Probate, Elder Law, Business Law and Real Estate Sections of the Connecticut Bar Association.
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