Claiming Your Wife's Inheritance After She's Dead

[Bestwifeever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum ... One thing this shows is that it's important to keep your will and beneficiaries up to date and try to account for cases like this. And if an heir does die, figure out what will happen and whether that's what you want, and change it if needed. I guess if you really don't care what happens once you die it doesn't matter, but I think most would rather not have our heirs battling over money and not talking to each other.

Good point. I think our simple wills are worded so our two kids would end up with half each, but since the wills were prepared both have married and have children. We need to see if the wills still would achieve what we want (in our case, we would want the grandchildren to inherit the parents' half if God forbid their parents pass away before us).

[RunningBum]

One other point I've heard is that if you want to leave someone out, the best way is to leave them a token amount, like $5 or $100 or whatever. That way they can't claim they were overlooked or that you intended to leave them more in a situation like this, or that they were verbally promised something.

[Sue J]

After Mom died Dad needed to change the beneficiary of his IRA to my sister and I. There was section where we needed to designate if the distribution was "per stirpes".

Per stirpes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We needed to designate that if either of us died before Dad, would our share go to our surviving spouse and/or children or would the surviving one of us be Dad's only heir and get 100%.

That sounds similar to the situation the OP described.

[nwsteve]

This thread is very timely as we are in the process of updating our wills. In our initial meeting with the attorney, we had a real "eye opener" when he shared that in Wash., there is a proviso that any beneficiaries named in the will supersede previously established POD assignments on record. We were always under the impression that financial accounts POD instructions were incontestable--apparently not in Wash! The attorney also told us that should we make a change in our financial accounts AFTER the date of the will, that POD would be controlling for that particular account.
Apparently the will wipes the slate clean for any previous POD instructions but can be then updated via a new POD.
The attorney also indicated that a number of other states had a similar proviso.
Nwsteve

[Sue J]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nwsteve This thread is very timely as we are in the process of updating our wills. In our initial meeting with the attorney, we had a real "eye opener" when he shared that in Wash., there is a proviso that any beneficiaries named in the will supersede previously established POD assignments on record. We were always under the impression that financial accounts POD instructions were incontestable--apparently not in Wash! The attorney also told us that should we make a change in our financial accounts AFTER the date of the will, that POD would be controlling for that particular account. Apparently the will wipes the slate clean for any previous POD instructions but can be then updated via a new POD. The attorney also indicated that a number of other states had a similar proviso. Nwsteve

Interesting. Here in Ohio, we were told that any POD precedes the will. Dad's POD is later than the will.

[Sesq]

Interesting stuff. I checked my trust, and if either of my two children were to have kids and predecease my wife and I, then my trust would give them a share to be divided. However, its tied to blood, the spouse of my child would get nothing. Not a big issue as my kids are 7 & 4, but I guess if they have long and successful marriages I may change that one day.

I don't remember if this came up when the trust was put together. My father did the trust for me (his main line of work these days), and we did discuss a lot of different scenarios. I am fine with the current language.

[Meadbh]

This thread just goes to show how careful you need to be when drawing up a will, and how important it is to update it when there is a major change. Otherwise the end result may be quite different to what you intended. Unless it is an absolutely simple situation I would always get a lawyer's help.

[jayc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rambler My parents' wills specifically state that if a child of theirs passes before they pass, neither the child's spouse nor the child's children are entitled to any inheritance. We intend to do the same, R

Why would you do this to grandkids? MIL passed after 1 sib had passed.
DW and other 2 sibs gave 25% to their sister's kids. Seemed fair to everyone.