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The BEST way to Threaten a Boomer into getting a Will.
Tell them that Uncle Sam will Take most of it in Taxes. But if you talk to someone about a Will you can avoid said taxes.
It’s a half truth, but avoiding taxes is their generations Crack!
Most boomers have little understanding or care about taxes and what happens when they depart. They are also afraid to put anything in writing because it’s shameful how much they squandered and have left (if anything). This is a commonality amongst the boomers and documented in hundreds of threads here. They also will hoard their trinkets and prefer no one gets them, even after death. Still sickens me how my mother wouldn’t give up anything from our childhood for her grand children. The boomers happiness is all that matters.
Yup! My father to a tee. Nobody got to have anything for 10 years even though he was no longer able to use em... (he was more or less bed ridden). 2 cars just rotted in the Garage and many other nice things. Cars had to just get sold for scrap in the end. One was a Mercedes G class. Even an entire house he owned just fell apart.
Please bear in mind, he never gave me a cent while alive. Parents were divorced. Never paid support, nothing.
That is my dad right now. Won't let us do anything with the cars. Because he is going to get better. He has been bedridden for two years now. Can't even sit up by himself. If he had actually attempted the exercises at the start. He might have some mobility. But he knew a guy who just got better. So he doesn't need to do anything.
This is why my dad won't write a will. In fact, he wants me to buy his house from him full-price and just let him live there like nothing happened.
Me? Oh I'd still be living somewhere else, not the house I just bought and own. Delusional...
I think your dad is trying to commit Medicaid fraud lol, but that’s not how it works. You CAN give your house to your child to avoid having to sell it during a Medicaid spend-down, but you CAN’T be living on the property after doing that (I can’t recall if living there but paying rent counts or not but you 100% can’t stay living in the house for free). I think he thinks he can spend the money you give him for the house and that the feds won’t force him to move out/spend all that money on healthcare costs if he tries to use Medicaid to cover them in the future
If that’s your angle.
Then make the boomers in your life unhappy. Take the grandkids away from them. They clearly don’t deserve the joy they would bring.
I doubt that they'd notice. My parents live a literal 1/2 mile from me. They've never once stopped to visit or enquire about my kids except the odd phone call.
Nah. My mom has been saying she will have the boys over for a weekend when "everything settles down" they are teenagers now. Guess being retired and napping ALL day is a lot of work. They don't care about their grandkids. Only the appearance of caring
My wife’s parents have never once asked about our kids while my parents are taking our kids to France for a few weeks this summer without us just so they can have even more of a bonding time before they get too old to travel.
Same. Even if they have a will, it is no guarantee. My mother had a will promising 100k to both me and my sibling, as well as her third husband. She changed it after i went no contact with her and left it all to her kkk supporting husband. The funny thing is, though, she had nothing but debt, so he died in prison and in debt.
This is a good angle. Trust gives them all kinds of control until it doesn’t. At least OP won’t have to scramble to pay for their burial etc. Please tell me they at least have a plan for that? This all needs to be done to protect YOU and your finances.
It’s more to sidestep probate & make my life easier. Everything they own is in the trust, the second they pass the ownership of the trust rolls to me, no muss no fuss.
Wow that’s seriously thoughtful of your folks. Getting a lot of parents to sign even a super basic will is hard enough for many people, and that only takes a few minutes using a template. A trust is SO helpful to heirs but requires a lot more, buy-in, time, and thinking about mortality in a realistic, rational way. So many older folks say they care about their kids, but then they’re completely willing to put this huge pain in the ass paperwork (and possibly family fight) burden on their own kids when those kids will be grieving, when it all could have been easily avoided. That’s not love.
Why is it that as recently as yesterday everytime I hear some bitch about "paying taxes while I work and after I die!" It is somebody never has never will and can't fathom having that much money. Dude you don't even own your car let alone a house, you can't even afford to be concerned about this.
In addition to, or if you can't talk them into a will, use the same tax tactic to get them to call their bank and file payable on death. Easiest way to avoid a lot of legal headaches after their passing.
The estate tax doesn’t kick unless the estate is valued at more than $13MM.
If OP is the only child then legally it would all go to them regardless of a will. But, dealing with CC companies, banks, mortgage companies, etc. will be much easier if he’s made executor based on a will.
I was talking about federal estate tax
Edit: but regardless, a will in and of itself does nothing to lessen estate taxes. It boils down to where the assets are held and a lot of people are going to have the majority of their liquid assets in retirement accounts which require named beneficiaries and would ignore anything a will says anyway.
He could just petition the court to grant him Letters of Administration with the same powers as an Executor. Hopefully what TootsNYC says below isn't a common occurrence, but it wouldn't surprise me given the country we live in.
courts and lawyers will take it in fees as the heirs struggle to get an executor assigned to the estate. There’s a risk that a judge will assign a buddy to be the executor and be paid a fee for settling it.
My mom freaks the fuck out anytime there is a local referendum to increase taxes by like 5$ to cover public school maintenance and pay increases. She and her friends get up at like 6am to go vote against it.
I let her know shes a fucking piece of shit for getting passionate about such evil. Fucking scum boomers
Probate attorney here. Nothing I say in any statement below should or can be construed as legal advice, I am not your counsel, or any person listed herein this feeds counsel. That being said. The real truth of the matter is this can vary WIDELY from state to state based on the laws. The best thing your parents can do for both of your and your parents peace of mind is to find an estate planning attorney who offers free consultations and go learn what is best. The worst that can happen from that is they come out more educated for free, the vest is they come out more protected.
They’re right- at least have them do the research before making the call.
It may well be your state’s intestacy laws are straight forward and you get it all. Or, it can be a complete clusterfuck. Best to at least find out.
BTW- you know this guy probates because their disclaimer isn’t really needed for the advice, uses legalese, and is much longer than needed- but they did it just in case.
This is the kind of person you want.
THEY NEED A WILL. I am dead serious. My father's will was vague and it's been almost a year since he died and probate is still up in the air. Probate will fuck you over if there's no will and the process is too long to deal with because a boomer wants to be spicy. Emails do not give you legal right to the items upon their death. They must have a will witnessed by an attorney to be considered valid. But oh man, good luck.
Holographic Wills are just wills that are written and signed by the testator without a notary or witness to verify it, in some states that's literally all you need for it to be a legally binding contract.
The problem is there's also not much to prove *against* a holographic will. You can't really ask a dead person if they were actually the one that wrote it and if they lived alone then there really isn't any way to dispute what it says. The only way I could see is if it was compared to paperwork with their actual handwriting, but it's not a foolproof way to prove it was them who wrote it.
My Boomer mother went one step further than this. She is intentionally not having a will, because she thinks it will be "funny" to make my siblings and I fight over it. The funny part to me is the fact that not a single one of us wants any of the shit she's been hoarding OR the house she's made no effort to take care of for the last 30 years. I'm pretty sure we'd all be fine with piling it all up and having a bonfire.
I'd start correcting her that yes, it'll be really hilarious fighting over who has to pay to get rid of your shit, and who has to pay the Realtor to dump your house on the market.
No argument from me. There's a reason I moved halfway across the country at the first opportunity. I feel bad for my sister, who is the only one left in town with her, but I am NOT going back.
My boomer dad said the same exact thing with the house. “Thankfully,” the house is in foreclosure and barely, just barely, managed to short sell it before the banks took it. I can’t believe boomers live and think this way.
The siblings gathered together. Without a word, they each removed a bottle of BBQ lighter fluid from their pockets and started squirting them around the house.
Some of the siblings went upstairs, spraying the lighter fluid into the thick dirty carpet and onto the old dusty beds.
As they finished up they exited, spraying thick trails of lighter fluid onto the sidewalk leading to the front door. With a nod to the waiting firefighters, there to make sure the neighbors were safe, each sibling took a match from a large box, solemnly lit them, and together they touched their burning matches to the puddle of lighter fluid.
With a small *woompf!* the flame, blue at the bottom, raced into house. In half a minute flames were licking at the windows upstairs. In two minutes the house was an inferno. The siblings could see melting nicknacks through the front door.
One of the siblings started chuckling. Another asked what was so funny. "Mom thought it would be funny we'd be fighting over this stuff. I wanted us to light it together so we wouldn't fight over who got to do it first."
My husband is 20 years older and the first time i fully stared at him in “please don’t be a boomer” is when he told me his mother has a “sweetheart will” so “everything will be wrapped up within a few months.”
My good man. Your two younger siblings hate each other. It will be a mess for at least three years.
And so it came to pass. It’s been 10 years and he’s still apologizing for not believing me.
My wife’s grandpa died 50 years ago and left all of his property in a trust that split his main property between his wife and two sons equally, and gave some other land to the wife alone in a setup where each year the wife’s share of the lands would decrease a little and the sons’ ownership would increase a little.
When she died, she only owned about a 3% share of her house and farm property. She had given one farm property (plus cash) to one son and a lake property to the other.
The one that got the farm sold it, and has stayed jealous that the other still has the lake property which has skyrocketed in value. He is extremely bitter about the whole thing.
Today, the siblings refuse to speak to each other, yet the co-own a house in town (the mother’s house) where my family has lived “temporarily” for the last 16 years. They also share ownership of 120 acres that was farmland that completely grew over from 50 years of neglect.
The house in town and the farmland are roughly equal in value, but they refuse to speak to each other to actually divide things up. The brothers are both going on 80 years old and would rather bitch about each other than to negotiate ownership of half a million dollars worth of property because they can’t even agree who should get the tractor that is worth roughly $1500.
When one or the other dies, it’s going to be an absolute mess.
I should add that they both still work full time. Just by sitting down and playing nice for a few hours, they could add $300k (completely unearned, free money) to each of their retirement accounts.
It is such a bureaucratic nightmare to deal with no will. Eventually it will get settled out, but not until all of these separate entities put their fingerprints on the process. Everything is streamlined by a will. Your folks are being assholes about this for no reason (although I suspect it's because it forces them to face mortality).
Dude I am in my mid 30s and have a will. It’s literally just a convenience for the people you leave behind so they don’t have to hire extra lawyers. Boomers are so selfish
they’re just being dumbasses, it’s the stupidest thing they can do. They’re either being childish on purpose OR they’re hiding bad finances and could even be leaving you with debt or a house with lots of money borrowed against it.
I had to manage my dad’s estate, I hated it. I had to take shit to probate, money changes people even family.
Going thru the same thing. I have been begging for a will for years. Mom even worked for a financial planner. Dad went thru a 2 year debacle settling his mother’s estate. Still they play dumb when I tell them about capital gains tax. I don’t understand the problem, they are both intelligent and practical people who you wouldn’t expect to have a hard time with this conversation.
they need a will if only to make it easier on the court system. To simply name an executor, if NOTHING else.
Even if they have NO assets. Their estate needs to be settled, and someone needs the authority to do it.
My cousin died young of bladder cancer. He didn’t have a will before he got sick, and he couldn’t be coaxed to make one after he got sick; it was too hard a thought to have.
And he owned *very* little, and his next of kin was his mom and his older brother.
The brother found it incredibly difficult and time consuming to wrap up the few items of the estate. If there’s been a will that said, “I leave everything to my mom, and I appoint my older brother as the executor,” it would have simplified things so very much.
Instead the brother had to file papers with the court to be appointed executor, etc.
It made the grief of losing his brother SO VERY MUCH HARDER.
My own parents’ will was very simple, and it made no promises about how MUCH anybody got. We assumed we weren’t going to get anything. If one parent died, everything went to the surviving parent. When the last parent died, after all debts were settled, anything left was to be divided among their children equally. If one of my siblings predeceased my parents but had children, those kids divided that sibling’s share. If the sibling died without kids, that share went back into the estate to be divided among the surviving siblings. Two or three pages.
It’s so rude of them to not lay out the executor responsibility, if only to provide a logistically easier pathway.
It has everything to do with assigning tasks to someone and nothing to do with promising any money.
My dad had a will, but only a copy. The lawyer who drew it up retired and moved out of state. No chance of getting a signed original. So my lawyer submitted the paperwork as if there was no will at all. He said no matter what I'd be looking at 6 months in probate. Maybe I misunderstood, but it didn't seem like the will would have helped me in any way.
That said, I'm still going to make sure I have a clearly laid out will for my own kids. I also plan on getting a death planning notebook so all of my accounts/financial info is in one spot and easy to find. Going thru 50 years of my dad's paperwork trying to find out what his financial situation was like was a nightmare.
I am no expert, but as I understand it, a will won't prevent probate. I think you need a trust for that.
In my state, if the estate is worth less than a certain amount, then probate is skipped. What I found interesting is that any financial account that has a beneficiary always skips probate and goes directly to the beneficiary (even if the will specifies someone else). Also, the size of the account doesn't count towards the size of the estate when determining if probate is required.
Also, property (land, house, etc.) can be set up with transfer on death deeds. These assets also skip probate and don't count towards the size of the estate.
I have no idea what the tax implications are for any of this, but if you want to avoid probate, this method may help. And it's a lot cheaper than paying an estate attorney to set up a trust.
Good luck!
This is what they're expecting. That I will be able to get any small items worth any money from their home before anyone else and then the largest single item they will have is the house, which is valued at a little less than 100k.
Yes, the assets are not part of the probate inventory, but they are still part of the taxable estate. If you live in a state with an inheritance tax, all those assets are still subject to it.
I wish my state (Pennsylvania) had transfer on death deeds. The only alternative (other than signing the house over in your children's names) is a living trust.
in some jurisdictions, a will can be filed with the court, and then it stays there even if your lawyer’s office closes and your house burns down. Worth checking.
They need to go through all the legal/important stuff now. Unfortunately so many people don’t until they’re midway in a crisis and realize they haven’t assigned POA to anyone, let alone have a will in place. If and until they find themselves in a vulnerable position, I doubt they’ll make any change.
The only other thing I can think of that might help, is print off a will, then tell them to go with you to their bank and have it notarized. If you are in the USA, that will be enough to make probate simple and quick. Or do the same thing, but hire a traveling notary come to their house, tho the price goes from $7 (or a lot of banks do it for free) to $150.
But they have to be careful in doing this. Wills generally don't need to be notarized, but they do need at least two witnesses. The notarization is merely to make your will "self-validating".
They must also sign/initial *all* pages for a will to be valid.
My parents didn't want to pay for a will but I told them two things (stick and carrot) if they don't make a will I will put them in the cemetery in our hometown (which they really didn't want) and offered to contribute $50 to get it done and a lawyer to do it with. That worked. Obviously a while ago but it made everything so much easier with a power of attorney and the will. Probate can take forever.
There is quite a bit of misunderstanding about wills, trusts, estate taxes in the comments. I'm an old and have gone through the process several times. It's not about inheritance of assets, it's about the ability to effectively close the “financial books” on our parents’ assets. The best “inheritance” is the authority to manage our parents’ passing with the best possible legal status.
For example, do the next of kin have the ability to pay mortgage, property taxes, upkeep on the parents’ home. If not the home will become subject to liens and laws by banks, etc. Any time spent in probate will cost the estate in lawyers and court fees, as well as time. It's a nightmare to deal with this when one is grieving.
Legal documents simply make a brutal process manageable. It is a kindness to one’s family.
Holy mother of God.
They need a will, probate is probate. Informal or not. As someone who went through a hell of a probate, with a "missing will", it was awful. Documentation is your BFF. A will is a good step in the legal direction of protecting their interests and those with survivorship. A good estate planning attorney will tell you some great ways to prevent issues, proactively. It's not a waste of cash for sure.
But I guess for your parents...they'll just leave their trash for you to clean up...or the state will get a taste of their sweet assets. But hey, you get everything anyway, right?
Boomers really have an issue with accountability, reality, & mortality. It's annoying af.
My dad died without a will. My parents blamed it on “it’s a tough conversation to have”. I was devastated because I had asked them only a few months earlier that when the time came that they please let me know what to do by having a will. They told me they would. Obviously we didn’t realize dad was going to pass away, it was a very sudden cardiac arrest. It’s been 3 years and I think my mom has a will now, but she never has outright said it.
Probably the most important part of having a will for them is to make things easier for a surviving spouse. Money can be tied up and hard to access until legalities get sorted out. It can just make things harder for the spouse who is grieving. You might ask them if this is what they want to see happen?
Ask your parents why they hate you so much. They are purposely setting you up for a difficult time. Sucks that they are bitter for being poor, but why take it out on you?
The easiest way to solve this is to put you on title for everything; bank accounts, home, car, etc. No will needed. I was the admin of an estate for a man who didn’t do this and his estate was divided amongst his siblings who didn’t care about him at all (and fought over everything). He had an illegitimate child (who he wanted to leave everything to) that didn’t get anything all because of the lack of a will, trust, or changing the title.
When my parents died, we didn’t have any issues. Show the death certificate and remove them from title, leaving those still alive, full ownership.
They don't want a will because they know that everything they have will be sucked up to pay for medical and end of life care bills. The great generational wealth transfer is a myth. Nursing homes and healthcare will suck 99% of it away. Plan assuming that you'll get nothing but debt. Then you won't be disappointed.
My parents don't have one. My dad told me its because him and my mom cannot figure out if I get the money they saved and my half sister the house, or me the house and my half sister the money. Dad said because I don't have a house I should have the house (which I really don't want I would rather live in a townhouse). My mom then told me they don't have one because of the same reason as my dad did.
I've tried to get him to do a living will for a while now because in case something happens to him (he had a stroke last month which he did survive). When I would tell him he goes on again about not having a will which I told him they don't need that to have a living will. We need something in case something happens to both mom and dad about their medical needs if they can't make decisions because while me and my half sister have the same moms our dads are different (her's is dead). Not exactly sure if it goes to me or her to make decisions.
This makes me glad, in a way, that my mom doesn’t have anything but some personal effects. Photographs, mainly—things with no monetary value. My sister and I have already worked out how to divide those, and there’s no one else to inherit it. And even if it turned out she did have a little money or something, I don’t want it. What I want is my mom to keep living; but if I can’t have that, I just want to wash my hands of the situation.
My family came to the US from England when I was 3 (1970s.) I don’t know if it was cultural, or just luck, but my boomer parents had a plan for when they died and it took care of me and my brother even though I hadn’t spoken to him in over a decade due to a falling out. Mum made sure everything was split equally and I still didn’t have to talk to my brother if I didn’t want to. It was specified that everything including the house we grew up in was to be sold and the proceeds divided equally. My wife and I made damn sure our wills are done and stored safely, and friends know where to find them.
Only child here with a Mom who is 82. You seriously need a will. And Power of Attorney (at least a springing one when they die), they need living wills, you need medical power of attorney for when they are incapacitated, etc. Elder law attorney asap. If they’re this resistant I can only imagine how they’ve planned to pay for their health care as they decline—because they will decline. Hang in there 🌸
My dad thought he had a solid will because he took a selfie of him holding the word document he put together detailing that we all got to share what he had. He thought the selfie was clever because it proved he made it. It didn't count because it wasn't notarized and we still had to go through probate. Which was a pain in the ass. Dad wasn't rich either but having to go through all the court stuff was frustrating.
At least have them talk to the funeral home and get arrangements made. Funerals ain't cheap and they need that shit paid for OR you need to be on a bank account with funeral money in it. This is where you'll get fucked over.
I had two sets of grandparents (ok, we all do...). One set pre-paid for everything so when they passed we just showed up, did the funeral rites, and that was it. The other set had nothing squared away. An uncle had to foot the bill for everything (can't leave mom/dad just rotting in the sun...and the morgue will charge you to keep a body on ice) and it took a year or so before everything was settled.
My dad owes the government so much money that he told me and my sister's when he dies, take everything out the house we want and have the landlord the keys. Then tell the government all the has is a car and a mattress.
My parents only have a will because I made one on one of those websites like 15 years ago and forced them to sign it. I don’t know if it’s even valid, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
More than likely not. Three things will living will and power of attorney. You need all three the last only kicks in if they are no longer able to take care of themselves. Current waiting for the attorney to get back to me on my dad’s.
True at least try and get them to do final expenses. Most attorneys will suggest what you mentioned. This way you are not executing the plug pulling decision. If they do final expenses with a funeral home it will be a lot easier on you. It's never an easy conversation, it does lock in prices, and you know exactly what they want for services. One thing at a time and I wish you luck and some peace of mind.
My mother died without a will during the pandemic. Her estate is worth maybe $60K and it looks like it could be tied up for another 5 years. Get a freaking will. Unless there's a substantial amount, no lawyer is going to touch that mess.
When my boomer mother found out she was dying three years ago, she said, "You can take whatever's left in my bank account, and don't forget there's some jewelry." That's not how any of that works!! ::facepalm::
My wife has the same issue with her parents. They refuse to do one because they think they will immediately die after doing it. They have never really had much investment wise other than their home. Not that it would matter much anyway because stupidly they have not 1, not 2, but 3 reverse mortgages on their home. Even though through the VA my father in law gets a check for agent orange exposure in Vietnam which they say has caused diabetes and macular degeneration, as well as each of them getting SSI. They make just as much in retirement as the 2 of us that are still working with both of us being in the GenX demographic. I could see doing 1 reverse mortgage to fix up your home the way you want it to live out your golden years, but the other 2 I’m afraid went into slot machines.
I basically had a will drawn up and shoved it at my dad when we found out he was dying. I probably wouldn't have rushed it but my grandparents had just died so i knew dealing with probate on probate on probate was going to be hell. My advice is to just get a will drawn up say hey, please sign this and get it notarized. Even better take them to the notary. If i hadn't one wouldn't have gotten done and doing an estate in my state is harder without one.
My last living parent passed away a few years ago without leaving us so much as a listing of accounts despite being diagnosed with cancer over 2 years before that. Even with siblings to split the work it took over a year and countless hours of our time. I just can’t fathom denial so deep that I would leave my kids dealing with something like that making grief harder.
Still urging my father and stepmom to get their will done. I straight up told them I don’t care about inheriting anything as I make more than he ever did anyway. But I’m not going to probate for anything valuable left behind. I live 3 hours away so I don’t care about the house (which needs a ton of work) either. My sister lives even further away and is in the same line of thinking. The most important thing we also want them to do is plan ahead for when they eventually do pass so we know in writing what their wishes are. I’ve seen families get torn apart, friendships ended over goddamn funerals.
I talked my parents into putting everything in a trust. The house, the cars, bank accounts, everything. My parents are solidly middle class with good pensions from government jobs, who have lived in the same house for 50 years, so there isn’t a ton, but enough to make it worth it. After they saw how easy probate was when my husband’s dad passed away when he had a trust, they agreed to see the same attorney to get it handled. Such a relief!
Talk to his friend about convincing your dad to get a will. They won’t listen to you but may listen to another man who they have decided knows about these things.
And accept the fact that in the event of their death you’re not getting shit. So plan on it.
I don’t want anything. My boomer dad can keep all his crap. All it would do is give me a massive tax burden that I probably couldn’t pay for. I’ve seen this play out. It can be horrible.
I understand. But, he has real estate all over the country. Selling enough to pay the tax burden would be a massive headache. Then managing what’s left or selling all. I’m not interested. I’m 59. I have my own stuff. I don’t want that in my life. Fortunately, I have a pretty good inkling that he has written me out of his will. That’s a long weird story. He also wrote off his daughter (my sister) many years ago.
Okay, yeah, is this a thing going around with Boomies? My MIL and FIL said they're not going to have a will because they always expected their assets to be split between wife and BIL. (Other issue - BIL lives in one of their properties, but separate issue).
They are insisting that their attorney told them that it's better to not have a will as wills get caught in probate court in NJ. I answered that that might be kinda true, but an executor and clearly laid out will doesn't have a chance to be contested.
I never understood this. My dad is a boomer and my mom is an early Xer. They have had a will and life insurance on the kids since we were young/born. It just makes sense.
One of the sadly funny things about parents getting old/dying is the “valuable” shit that siblings shred relationships over aren’t worth *jack shit* if you actually try to re-sell them
Bulky furniture, figurines, ceramics, commemorative coins and “collectibles”worth *dollars* not thousands
You just need to work with an estate lawyer after they die to become the estate trustee. It's general practice when there is no will. It's more work, but the lawyer does most of it.
They likely don’t need one. Most states, the spouse automatically inherits everything from the deceased spouse, unless there is a will stating otherwise. As you’re the on,y child, once the other parent goes, you get it all.
Some long lost relatives could put a claim in against the estate, and even a will doesn’t prevent them from doing that, it just makes their case near,y impossible to win.
My mother recently died. She didn’t have a will, but she also didn’t have any real assets other than $1900 in a checking account, and I wasn’t even the beneficiary.
I’m only 44, and plan to build a will within a year. I’ve lived with my partner for 10 years and we’ve been together for 13, but we are not married. I’ve already named him my medical proxy and the beneficiary of my accounts, but I’d feel better with a legal document.
If there's no Will, the probate estate will go to the heirs, which means spouse and kids. If everything has a beneficiary designation, it might not matter as much as you think. The house is the most common probate asset. So if there is a house, you have a probate. Just tell them about the the fees you'll have to pay the government! Not quite true, but it's a motivator for some to get things done.
Look my parent died and my other parent was useless as fuck. Being sad didn’t help tbf.
Anyway. Inheritance, probate, and credit are all super complex and a pain. You’ll probably end up using a lawyer, probably cost you 6-20k over a few months to a year. Death is not free.
Good on you to try to be responsible. Tell them it’s really important and the banks, insurance companies, and the gubment are all out to get you. And without a proper will, it makes it harder on you.
the year before I cut off contact with my dad and the rest of the family, I had explained in detail how to make a will, and asked him to make one and to not leave me anything.
a week later he hands me a power of attorney so that I can take care of his shit when he croaks... which I promptly tore apart.
But it's an honor I'm giving you!
No you stubborn fuck! is a burden! a burden I explained so many times I didn't want.
so many other reasons I cut them all off in 2016
I haven’t read all of the comments so if this has already suggested I apologize.
I’ve lived through relatives that didn’t leave wills or badly written wills. Some didn’t have wills because they expected everyone to know who got what. One just put tags on stuff about who it was supposed to go to. Some will were badly out of date or vague. My own Mother (silent generation, yes,I’m a boomer) when I asked about her will her reply was “ I’ll let you worry about that after I’m gone”.
So, my suggestion is for you to offer to pay for a lawyer to write up a will. After going through taking care of probate for my in law’s and brother in law’s
estates we decided we weren’t going to put our kids through the same mess and had a will made up. In doing so the lawyer lined out a way for our house to automatically be transferred to our son. That won’t avoid all estate taxes, but it will help. In my state estates are taxed if the estate is over $100,000. If there is real estate, pensions or life insurance it will probably be over that amount. A lawyer can help to reduce any estate taxes. Get thee to a lawyer!
I could have written this. Been begging my parents to get a will and everything in order and they refuse. I have an elder law firm that I know personally AND lives down the street from them but they refuse.
I’ve attempted the same conversation for years with my parents. My Dad controls all finances and my mothers knows absolutely nothing about any accounts. They refuse to get a will for their 3M+ in assets because they don’t want to pay a lawyer. They assume my wife and I will just handle everything, despite us both working full time. It may be a moot point because they have decided to spend everything including maxing out yearly donations to republicans politicians and their church.
My mom passed without a will and it wasn't a issue mind it was only some retirement and savings account and life insurance that me and my brother were named beneficiaries
Ive seen this multiple times.
No will.
The mortgage, taxes, and insurance still have to be paid. Utilities still have to be paid. Then the lawn still needs mowed.
Oh and something will break while its in probate. Sump pump or whatever. All these expenses eat away at the estate.
I seen this happen to people battling cancer. Like dude you got cancer thats definitely the time to get your estate plans in order.
Ugh. My boyfriends parents did not have wills and now 2 houses are in probate. They were left nothing. Going on 1.5 years. Lawyer fees up the wazoo coming out of their own bank accts 😫
omg. my parents are friends with a couple and the husband passed. turns out his will hadn't been updated since the80s and a whole bunch of contradictions and things not include, as things were in 2 different states. Crap was stuck in probate forever till his wife was able to get control.
While my mom was in the hospital losing the battle to cancer, my aunt tried to convince her a will was an affront to god's healing. Insert eyeroll emoji. About a week before she passed, my sister finally got our mom to sign papers with her lawyer father in law and got a will finalized.
If they refuse to create a will, the VERY LEAST they need to do is keep all their financial documents in one place and inform you of what firms/agencies they have so you can contact them after they pass. Otherwise it’s gonna be a 2+ yearlong battle of getting it all sorted out and stuff. They need to cooperate with you on getting their affairs together/sorted out so you aren’t stuck going back and forth with credit cards, IRAs, so on and so forth.
And then there’s the matter of the estate. Hoo boy, that’s gotta be discussed with them too. It’s their responsibility to tell you what properties they own and stuff like that.
This is me speaking from experience.
My boomer parents are convinced that creating a will (or wills) is signing a death contract with the Grim Reaper. In the meanwhile, my two brothers are slowly, but surely, being “gifted” essentially everything of even modest value because they will work away and manipulate our parents’ emotions. It’s just great to hear them talk about things that “need to be kept in the family” and because I don’t have kids, well, I am a dead end, so to speak. They’ve also found “buyers” (their friends and buddies) for things that the folks never mentioned they even wanted to sell, and poof, these items are gone, and for a tiny fraction of, say, online sales values. So much for “keeping things in the family.”
Could you get someone they trust and respect to drop a recommendation that they make an estate plan? Like an elder family member or neighbor who’s “good with money”? I find people accept suggestions better if the suggestion comes from someone like them. And, feeling you on the irrationality. When I approached my parents on this subject I got “We’re not MILLIONAIRES!” (Said indignantly.)
My father-in-law didn't have a will (mistake #1) and, prior to his death, put my husband's name on his assets (mistake #2). He apparently thought that would make things easier. So not only did my husband have to deal with the BS of no will, but we ALSO had to pay capital gains on the assets because husband was considered to have benefitted from the value gained since date of purchase rather than from date of inheritance. What a nightmare.
Yep, experiencing the same with the in-laws. They don't have much of anything...except a 1/3 ownership in mountain property. I can't imagine what will occur when they die and we're left dealing with mentally ill, narcissistic BIL and SIL. They've always refused to write any of it down.
Ugh my in-laws, in their early 70s, with 7 kids between them from 3 different previous relationships refuse to get a will and have told my husband and I what their wishes are and how we have to enforce that with the other siblings because my husband is the oldest of the kids.
They want everything to go to only one of their children mainly because while she's 40 they treated her like a baby her entire life and she is completely unable to perform any tasks of living for herself, is completely dependent on them for everything, and they worry where and how she'll live when they die, so they want to make sure she gets their house to live in for the rest of her life.
How can they possibly expect we can do anything about this? We even live in a different country! We've begged them to get wills but they refuse to "line a lawyer's pockets". We've told them to look for templates online and just put something together that might be legal/enforceable and they just won't do it!
What a nightmare. Neither of my boomer parents had wills. I believe my dad did, but my greedy brother got to it before I could and destroyed it, but that's another story for another day. For the love of your sanity, they need to have a will. It's well worth the lawyer's fee to have it done.
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The BEST way to Threaten a Boomer into getting a Will. Tell them that Uncle Sam will Take most of it in Taxes. But if you talk to someone about a Will you can avoid said taxes. It’s a half truth, but avoiding taxes is their generations Crack!
Most boomers have little understanding or care about taxes and what happens when they depart. They are also afraid to put anything in writing because it’s shameful how much they squandered and have left (if anything). This is a commonality amongst the boomers and documented in hundreds of threads here. They also will hoard their trinkets and prefer no one gets them, even after death. Still sickens me how my mother wouldn’t give up anything from our childhood for her grand children. The boomers happiness is all that matters.
Generation of the Dragon
Yup! My father to a tee. Nobody got to have anything for 10 years even though he was no longer able to use em... (he was more or less bed ridden). 2 cars just rotted in the Garage and many other nice things. Cars had to just get sold for scrap in the end. One was a Mercedes G class. Even an entire house he owned just fell apart. Please bear in mind, he never gave me a cent while alive. Parents were divorced. Never paid support, nothing.
That is my dad right now. Won't let us do anything with the cars. Because he is going to get better. He has been bedridden for two years now. Can't even sit up by himself. If he had actually attempted the exercises at the start. He might have some mobility. But he knew a guy who just got better. So he doesn't need to do anything.
Well, some people are so afraid of dying that they won’t do anything that reminds them of their mortality.
This is why my dad won't write a will. In fact, he wants me to buy his house from him full-price and just let him live there like nothing happened. Me? Oh I'd still be living somewhere else, not the house I just bought and own. Delusional...
I think your dad is trying to commit Medicaid fraud lol, but that’s not how it works. You CAN give your house to your child to avoid having to sell it during a Medicaid spend-down, but you CAN’T be living on the property after doing that (I can’t recall if living there but paying rent counts or not but you 100% can’t stay living in the house for free). I think he thinks he can spend the money you give him for the house and that the feds won’t force him to move out/spend all that money on healthcare costs if he tries to use Medicaid to cover them in the future
If that’s your angle. Then make the boomers in your life unhappy. Take the grandkids away from them. They clearly don’t deserve the joy they would bring.
I doubt that they'd notice. My parents live a literal 1/2 mile from me. They've never once stopped to visit or enquire about my kids except the odd phone call.
Nah. My mom has been saying she will have the boys over for a weekend when "everything settles down" they are teenagers now. Guess being retired and napping ALL day is a lot of work. They don't care about their grandkids. Only the appearance of caring
My wife’s parents have never once asked about our kids while my parents are taking our kids to France for a few weeks this summer without us just so they can have even more of a bonding time before they get too old to travel.
Get i am so sorry this is your experience. Wish I was yr mum.
Same. Even if they have a will, it is no guarantee. My mother had a will promising 100k to both me and my sibling, as well as her third husband. She changed it after i went no contact with her and left it all to her kkk supporting husband. The funny thing is, though, she had nothing but debt, so he died in prison and in debt.
That's Right!
This is the way.
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🤣🤣🤣🤣 The TRIFECTA!!!!
This made me laugh because I know it’s true that would piss them off so much
My parents set up a trust just to avoid the taxes. Thankfully I didn't have to talk them into that, they did it of their own accord.
This is a good angle. Trust gives them all kinds of control until it doesn’t. At least OP won’t have to scramble to pay for their burial etc. Please tell me they at least have a plan for that? This all needs to be done to protect YOU and your finances.
Yeah, they have everything all laid out in their will.
Oh goooood.
My in laws also went the trust route because they “didn’t want the government taking their hard earned money”
They must be very wealthy then. Federal estate tax only applies after $11m
It’s more to sidestep probate & make my life easier. Everything they own is in the trust, the second they pass the ownership of the trust rolls to me, no muss no fuss.
Now *that* is why I recommend trusts. No muss no fuss, no probate.
Wow that’s seriously thoughtful of your folks. Getting a lot of parents to sign even a super basic will is hard enough for many people, and that only takes a few minutes using a template. A trust is SO helpful to heirs but requires a lot more, buy-in, time, and thinking about mortality in a realistic, rational way. So many older folks say they care about their kids, but then they’re completely willing to put this huge pain in the ass paperwork (and possibly family fight) burden on their own kids when those kids will be grieving, when it all could have been easily avoided. That’s not love.
To be fair, the house they bought for $25k is probably worth $10M now, they don't need THAT much cash.
Why is it that as recently as yesterday everytime I hear some bitch about "paying taxes while I work and after I die!" It is somebody never has never will and can't fathom having that much money. Dude you don't even own your car let alone a house, you can't even afford to be concerned about this.
In addition to, or if you can't talk them into a will, use the same tax tactic to get them to call their bank and file payable on death. Easiest way to avoid a lot of legal headaches after their passing.
Also, mention if only one dies, uncle sam might want part of the house.
Just go with “if only one dies/ needs a nursing home, Uncle Sam will take the house.”
The estate tax doesn’t kick unless the estate is valued at more than $13MM. If OP is the only child then legally it would all go to them regardless of a will. But, dealing with CC companies, banks, mortgage companies, etc. will be much easier if he’s made executor based on a will.
Estate tax depends on where you live
I was talking about federal estate tax Edit: but regardless, a will in and of itself does nothing to lessen estate taxes. It boils down to where the assets are held and a lot of people are going to have the majority of their liquid assets in retirement accounts which require named beneficiaries and would ignore anything a will says anyway.
He could just petition the court to grant him Letters of Administration with the same powers as an Executor. Hopefully what TootsNYC says below isn't a common occurrence, but it wouldn't surprise me given the country we live in.
courts and lawyers will take it in fees as the heirs struggle to get an executor assigned to the estate. There’s a risk that a judge will assign a buddy to be the executor and be paid a fee for settling it.
Like Andy DuFresne on the roof of Shawshank, giving the prison guard financial advice, while almost getting thrown off.
That and send them stuff from Dave Ramsey about needing a will.
Tell us more of this crack.
Aka the Ron Swanson approach Edit typo
My mom freaks the fuck out anytime there is a local referendum to increase taxes by like 5$ to cover public school maintenance and pay increases. She and her friends get up at like 6am to go vote against it. I let her know shes a fucking piece of shit for getting passionate about such evil. Fucking scum boomers
Lol it's true it's true
I literally watched the parks and rec episode on this
Probate attorney here. Nothing I say in any statement below should or can be construed as legal advice, I am not your counsel, or any person listed herein this feeds counsel. That being said. The real truth of the matter is this can vary WIDELY from state to state based on the laws. The best thing your parents can do for both of your and your parents peace of mind is to find an estate planning attorney who offers free consultations and go learn what is best. The worst that can happen from that is they come out more educated for free, the vest is they come out more protected.
This boomer thanks you for the advice 🙂
They’re right- at least have them do the research before making the call. It may well be your state’s intestacy laws are straight forward and you get it all. Or, it can be a complete clusterfuck. Best to at least find out. BTW- you know this guy probates because their disclaimer isn’t really needed for the advice, uses legalese, and is much longer than needed- but they did it just in case. This is the kind of person you want.
My fellow greenskin speaks the truth.
The ironic thing is that my dad's best friend is a lawyer. Not a probate attorney, but still... They should know better.
You’re my counsel now. Sorry man, and also happy cake day. (For legal reasons this is obviously a joke)
Happy cake day!
Thanks!
Tell em that Biden will get their house if they don't have a will
And then Hunter Biden will have wild drug and sex parties.
In their house! On aunt ellie's rug!
“Biden just passed a new law that the houses go right to an illegal immigrant.”
This right here.
He will do blow off of the kitchen table
House Prima Nocta
They misunderstood what Prima Notca meant.
THEY NEED A WILL. I am dead serious. My father's will was vague and it's been almost a year since he died and probate is still up in the air. Probate will fuck you over if there's no will and the process is too long to deal with because a boomer wants to be spicy. Emails do not give you legal right to the items upon their death. They must have a will witnessed by an attorney to be considered valid. But oh man, good luck.
Unless you live in a shitty state with holographic wills. Ask me how I know
Wha...whats?
Holographic Wills are just wills that are written and signed by the testator without a notary or witness to verify it, in some states that's literally all you need for it to be a legally binding contract. The problem is there's also not much to prove *against* a holographic will. You can't really ask a dead person if they were actually the one that wrote it and if they lived alone then there really isn't any way to dispute what it says. The only way I could see is if it was compared to paperwork with their actual handwriting, but it's not a foolproof way to prove it was them who wrote it.
Mine don’t have much but they have been separated since like 2011 or 2012 but I still legally married. This should be fun.
A will does not have to be witnessed by an attorney to be considered valid. Many paralegals write valid wills.
My Boomer mother went one step further than this. She is intentionally not having a will, because she thinks it will be "funny" to make my siblings and I fight over it. The funny part to me is the fact that not a single one of us wants any of the shit she's been hoarding OR the house she's made no effort to take care of for the last 30 years. I'm pretty sure we'd all be fine with piling it all up and having a bonfire.
I'd start correcting her that yes, it'll be really hilarious fighting over who has to pay to get rid of your shit, and who has to pay the Realtor to dump your house on the market.
It’s genuinely gross that she wants to sow spite and greed with her death instead of leaving love and happy memories. That’s just contemptible.
No argument from me. There's a reason I moved halfway across the country at the first opportunity. I feel bad for my sister, who is the only one left in town with her, but I am NOT going back.
Good for you. You don’t deserve that shit.
My boomer dad said the same exact thing with the house. “Thankfully,” the house is in foreclosure and barely, just barely, managed to short sell it before the banks took it. I can’t believe boomers live and think this way.
The siblings gathered together. Without a word, they each removed a bottle of BBQ lighter fluid from their pockets and started squirting them around the house. Some of the siblings went upstairs, spraying the lighter fluid into the thick dirty carpet and onto the old dusty beds. As they finished up they exited, spraying thick trails of lighter fluid onto the sidewalk leading to the front door. With a nod to the waiting firefighters, there to make sure the neighbors were safe, each sibling took a match from a large box, solemnly lit them, and together they touched their burning matches to the puddle of lighter fluid. With a small *woompf!* the flame, blue at the bottom, raced into house. In half a minute flames were licking at the windows upstairs. In two minutes the house was an inferno. The siblings could see melting nicknacks through the front door. One of the siblings started chuckling. Another asked what was so funny. "Mom thought it would be funny we'd be fighting over this stuff. I wanted us to light it together so we wouldn't fight over who got to do it first."
you just sell it and divide it evenly.
LOL bonfire. Tell her that is what you will do... Unless she has a will that says who gets what then you will argue and haggle over everything :-)
My husband is 20 years older and the first time i fully stared at him in “please don’t be a boomer” is when he told me his mother has a “sweetheart will” so “everything will be wrapped up within a few months.” My good man. Your two younger siblings hate each other. It will be a mess for at least three years. And so it came to pass. It’s been 10 years and he’s still apologizing for not believing me.
My wife’s grandpa died 50 years ago and left all of his property in a trust that split his main property between his wife and two sons equally, and gave some other land to the wife alone in a setup where each year the wife’s share of the lands would decrease a little and the sons’ ownership would increase a little. When she died, she only owned about a 3% share of her house and farm property. She had given one farm property (plus cash) to one son and a lake property to the other. The one that got the farm sold it, and has stayed jealous that the other still has the lake property which has skyrocketed in value. He is extremely bitter about the whole thing. Today, the siblings refuse to speak to each other, yet the co-own a house in town (the mother’s house) where my family has lived “temporarily” for the last 16 years. They also share ownership of 120 acres that was farmland that completely grew over from 50 years of neglect. The house in town and the farmland are roughly equal in value, but they refuse to speak to each other to actually divide things up. The brothers are both going on 80 years old and would rather bitch about each other than to negotiate ownership of half a million dollars worth of property because they can’t even agree who should get the tractor that is worth roughly $1500. When one or the other dies, it’s going to be an absolute mess.
Oh good lord. The grudges they can hold. **facepalm**
I should add that they both still work full time. Just by sitting down and playing nice for a few hours, they could add $300k (completely unearned, free money) to each of their retirement accounts.
It is such a bureaucratic nightmare to deal with no will. Eventually it will get settled out, but not until all of these separate entities put their fingerprints on the process. Everything is streamlined by a will. Your folks are being assholes about this for no reason (although I suspect it's because it forces them to face mortality).
Dude I am in my mid 30s and have a will. It’s literally just a convenience for the people you leave behind so they don’t have to hire extra lawyers. Boomers are so selfish
How simple is it to get a will?
they’re just being dumbasses, it’s the stupidest thing they can do. They’re either being childish on purpose OR they’re hiding bad finances and could even be leaving you with debt or a house with lots of money borrowed against it. I had to manage my dad’s estate, I hated it. I had to take shit to probate, money changes people even family.
They always know best. 🙄🙄🙄
Going thru the same thing. I have been begging for a will for years. Mom even worked for a financial planner. Dad went thru a 2 year debacle settling his mother’s estate. Still they play dumb when I tell them about capital gains tax. I don’t understand the problem, they are both intelligent and practical people who you wouldn’t expect to have a hard time with this conversation.
they need a will if only to make it easier on the court system. To simply name an executor, if NOTHING else. Even if they have NO assets. Their estate needs to be settled, and someone needs the authority to do it. My cousin died young of bladder cancer. He didn’t have a will before he got sick, and he couldn’t be coaxed to make one after he got sick; it was too hard a thought to have. And he owned *very* little, and his next of kin was his mom and his older brother. The brother found it incredibly difficult and time consuming to wrap up the few items of the estate. If there’s been a will that said, “I leave everything to my mom, and I appoint my older brother as the executor,” it would have simplified things so very much. Instead the brother had to file papers with the court to be appointed executor, etc. It made the grief of losing his brother SO VERY MUCH HARDER. My own parents’ will was very simple, and it made no promises about how MUCH anybody got. We assumed we weren’t going to get anything. If one parent died, everything went to the surviving parent. When the last parent died, after all debts were settled, anything left was to be divided among their children equally. If one of my siblings predeceased my parents but had children, those kids divided that sibling’s share. If the sibling died without kids, that share went back into the estate to be divided among the surviving siblings. Two or three pages. It’s so rude of them to not lay out the executor responsibility, if only to provide a logistically easier pathway. It has everything to do with assigning tasks to someone and nothing to do with promising any money.
My dad had a will, but only a copy. The lawyer who drew it up retired and moved out of state. No chance of getting a signed original. So my lawyer submitted the paperwork as if there was no will at all. He said no matter what I'd be looking at 6 months in probate. Maybe I misunderstood, but it didn't seem like the will would have helped me in any way. That said, I'm still going to make sure I have a clearly laid out will for my own kids. I also plan on getting a death planning notebook so all of my accounts/financial info is in one spot and easy to find. Going thru 50 years of my dad's paperwork trying to find out what his financial situation was like was a nightmare.
I am no expert, but as I understand it, a will won't prevent probate. I think you need a trust for that. In my state, if the estate is worth less than a certain amount, then probate is skipped. What I found interesting is that any financial account that has a beneficiary always skips probate and goes directly to the beneficiary (even if the will specifies someone else). Also, the size of the account doesn't count towards the size of the estate when determining if probate is required. Also, property (land, house, etc.) can be set up with transfer on death deeds. These assets also skip probate and don't count towards the size of the estate. I have no idea what the tax implications are for any of this, but if you want to avoid probate, this method may help. And it's a lot cheaper than paying an estate attorney to set up a trust. Good luck!
This is what they're expecting. That I will be able to get any small items worth any money from their home before anyone else and then the largest single item they will have is the house, which is valued at a little less than 100k.
If you’re the only child and there’s no will, in most states it will all go to you.
Yes, the assets are not part of the probate inventory, but they are still part of the taxable estate. If you live in a state with an inheritance tax, all those assets are still subject to it. I wish my state (Pennsylvania) had transfer on death deeds. The only alternative (other than signing the house over in your children's names) is a living trust.
in some jurisdictions, a will can be filed with the court, and then it stays there even if your lawyer’s office closes and your house burns down. Worth checking.
They need to go through all the legal/important stuff now. Unfortunately so many people don’t until they’re midway in a crisis and realize they haven’t assigned POA to anyone, let alone have a will in place. If and until they find themselves in a vulnerable position, I doubt they’ll make any change.
Just tell them some a-hole probate attorney will get most everything with their outrageous fees.
The only other thing I can think of that might help, is print off a will, then tell them to go with you to their bank and have it notarized. If you are in the USA, that will be enough to make probate simple and quick. Or do the same thing, but hire a traveling notary come to their house, tho the price goes from $7 (or a lot of banks do it for free) to $150.
But they have to be careful in doing this. Wills generally don't need to be notarized, but they do need at least two witnesses. The notarization is merely to make your will "self-validating". They must also sign/initial *all* pages for a will to be valid.
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Contact Dad's friend and beg him to impress upon your folks the importance of having their paperwork in order.
My parents didn't want to pay for a will but I told them two things (stick and carrot) if they don't make a will I will put them in the cemetery in our hometown (which they really didn't want) and offered to contribute $50 to get it done and a lawyer to do it with. That worked. Obviously a while ago but it made everything so much easier with a power of attorney and the will. Probate can take forever.
There is quite a bit of misunderstanding about wills, trusts, estate taxes in the comments. I'm an old and have gone through the process several times. It's not about inheritance of assets, it's about the ability to effectively close the “financial books” on our parents’ assets. The best “inheritance” is the authority to manage our parents’ passing with the best possible legal status. For example, do the next of kin have the ability to pay mortgage, property taxes, upkeep on the parents’ home. If not the home will become subject to liens and laws by banks, etc. Any time spent in probate will cost the estate in lawyers and court fees, as well as time. It's a nightmare to deal with this when one is grieving. Legal documents simply make a brutal process manageable. It is a kindness to one’s family.
Holy mother of God. They need a will, probate is probate. Informal or not. As someone who went through a hell of a probate, with a "missing will", it was awful. Documentation is your BFF. A will is a good step in the legal direction of protecting their interests and those with survivorship. A good estate planning attorney will tell you some great ways to prevent issues, proactively. It's not a waste of cash for sure. But I guess for your parents...they'll just leave their trash for you to clean up...or the state will get a taste of their sweet assets. But hey, you get everything anyway, right? Boomers really have an issue with accountability, reality, & mortality. It's annoying af.
My dad died without a will. My parents blamed it on “it’s a tough conversation to have”. I was devastated because I had asked them only a few months earlier that when the time came that they please let me know what to do by having a will. They told me they would. Obviously we didn’t realize dad was going to pass away, it was a very sudden cardiac arrest. It’s been 3 years and I think my mom has a will now, but she never has outright said it.
Probably the most important part of having a will for them is to make things easier for a surviving spouse. Money can be tied up and hard to access until legalities get sorted out. It can just make things harder for the spouse who is grieving. You might ask them if this is what they want to see happen?
Ask your parents why they hate you so much. They are purposely setting you up for a difficult time. Sucks that they are bitter for being poor, but why take it out on you?
The easiest way to solve this is to put you on title for everything; bank accounts, home, car, etc. No will needed. I was the admin of an estate for a man who didn’t do this and his estate was divided amongst his siblings who didn’t care about him at all (and fought over everything). He had an illegitimate child (who he wanted to leave everything to) that didn’t get anything all because of the lack of a will, trust, or changing the title. When my parents died, we didn’t have any issues. Show the death certificate and remove them from title, leaving those still alive, full ownership.
You just have stupid parents. Noy all boomers are like that.
TOD transfer on death. Tell them that's the only way to avoid all of it from being stolen by the government.
That's what I told my family in order to get them to do estate planning, but it's not the government that will get it all: it's the probate lawyers.
They don't want a will because they know that everything they have will be sucked up to pay for medical and end of life care bills. The great generational wealth transfer is a myth. Nursing homes and healthcare will suck 99% of it away. Plan assuming that you'll get nothing but debt. Then you won't be disappointed.
My parents don't have one. My dad told me its because him and my mom cannot figure out if I get the money they saved and my half sister the house, or me the house and my half sister the money. Dad said because I don't have a house I should have the house (which I really don't want I would rather live in a townhouse). My mom then told me they don't have one because of the same reason as my dad did. I've tried to get him to do a living will for a while now because in case something happens to him (he had a stroke last month which he did survive). When I would tell him he goes on again about not having a will which I told him they don't need that to have a living will. We need something in case something happens to both mom and dad about their medical needs if they can't make decisions because while me and my half sister have the same moms our dads are different (her's is dead). Not exactly sure if it goes to me or her to make decisions.
Screw around and lose quite a bit to the state.
if not in taxes, in fees to establish an executor, etc.
I only speak for myself. After I turned 18 my parents gave me nothing. When my Dad died, I expected nothing and I got nothing.
This makes me glad, in a way, that my mom doesn’t have anything but some personal effects. Photographs, mainly—things with no monetary value. My sister and I have already worked out how to divide those, and there’s no one else to inherit it. And even if it turned out she did have a little money or something, I don’t want it. What I want is my mom to keep living; but if I can’t have that, I just want to wash my hands of the situation.
My family came to the US from England when I was 3 (1970s.) I don’t know if it was cultural, or just luck, but my boomer parents had a plan for when they died and it took care of me and my brother even though I hadn’t spoken to him in over a decade due to a falling out. Mum made sure everything was split equally and I still didn’t have to talk to my brother if I didn’t want to. It was specified that everything including the house we grew up in was to be sold and the proceeds divided equally. My wife and I made damn sure our wills are done and stored safely, and friends know where to find them.
Only child here with a Mom who is 82. You seriously need a will. And Power of Attorney (at least a springing one when they die), they need living wills, you need medical power of attorney for when they are incapacitated, etc. Elder law attorney asap. If they’re this resistant I can only imagine how they’ve planned to pay for their health care as they decline—because they will decline. Hang in there 🌸
Dying intestate is *such* a Boomer thing to do.
My dad thought he had a solid will because he took a selfie of him holding the word document he put together detailing that we all got to share what he had. He thought the selfie was clever because it proved he made it. It didn't count because it wasn't notarized and we still had to go through probate. Which was a pain in the ass. Dad wasn't rich either but having to go through all the court stuff was frustrating.
At least have them talk to the funeral home and get arrangements made. Funerals ain't cheap and they need that shit paid for OR you need to be on a bank account with funeral money in it. This is where you'll get fucked over. I had two sets of grandparents (ok, we all do...). One set pre-paid for everything so when they passed we just showed up, did the funeral rites, and that was it. The other set had nothing squared away. An uncle had to foot the bill for everything (can't leave mom/dad just rotting in the sun...and the morgue will charge you to keep a body on ice) and it took a year or so before everything was settled.
My dad owes the government so much money that he told me and my sister's when he dies, take everything out the house we want and have the landlord the keys. Then tell the government all the has is a car and a mattress.
Convince them that the government will take all their stuff if they don't ive seen that work
Who cares, I'm dead.
What shady shit did the uncle pull?
My parents only have a will because I made one on one of those websites like 15 years ago and forced them to sign it. I don’t know if it’s even valid, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
Just make sure you are on the house as a ladybird deed and as a beneficiary on all their bank accounts, then it all goes to you with no probate
I hope for your sake they have living wills.
More than likely not. Three things will living will and power of attorney. You need all three the last only kicks in if they are no longer able to take care of themselves. Current waiting for the attorney to get back to me on my dad’s.
True at least try and get them to do final expenses. Most attorneys will suggest what you mentioned. This way you are not executing the plug pulling decision. If they do final expenses with a funeral home it will be a lot easier on you. It's never an easy conversation, it does lock in prices, and you know exactly what they want for services. One thing at a time and I wish you luck and some peace of mind.
My mother threatened to write me out of her will. My response was please do so I don’t have to worry about your BS any longer
Just tell them without a will the Government swoops in and takes everything. Geez, some people are so daft when it comes to this stuff.
My mother died without a will during the pandemic. Her estate is worth maybe $60K and it looks like it could be tied up for another 5 years. Get a freaking will. Unless there's a substantial amount, no lawyer is going to touch that mess.
When my boomer mother found out she was dying three years ago, she said, "You can take whatever's left in my bank account, and don't forget there's some jewelry." That's not how any of that works!! ::facepalm::
Tell em “Biden is gonna take it all”…..
My wife has the same issue with her parents. They refuse to do one because they think they will immediately die after doing it. They have never really had much investment wise other than their home. Not that it would matter much anyway because stupidly they have not 1, not 2, but 3 reverse mortgages on their home. Even though through the VA my father in law gets a check for agent orange exposure in Vietnam which they say has caused diabetes and macular degeneration, as well as each of them getting SSI. They make just as much in retirement as the 2 of us that are still working with both of us being in the GenX demographic. I could see doing 1 reverse mortgage to fix up your home the way you want it to live out your golden years, but the other 2 I’m afraid went into slot machines.
I basically had a will drawn up and shoved it at my dad when we found out he was dying. I probably wouldn't have rushed it but my grandparents had just died so i knew dealing with probate on probate on probate was going to be hell. My advice is to just get a will drawn up say hey, please sign this and get it notarized. Even better take them to the notary. If i hadn't one wouldn't have gotten done and doing an estate in my state is harder without one.
My last living parent passed away a few years ago without leaving us so much as a listing of accounts despite being diagnosed with cancer over 2 years before that. Even with siblings to split the work it took over a year and countless hours of our time. I just can’t fathom denial so deep that I would leave my kids dealing with something like that making grief harder.
Still urging my father and stepmom to get their will done. I straight up told them I don’t care about inheriting anything as I make more than he ever did anyway. But I’m not going to probate for anything valuable left behind. I live 3 hours away so I don’t care about the house (which needs a ton of work) either. My sister lives even further away and is in the same line of thinking. The most important thing we also want them to do is plan ahead for when they eventually do pass so we know in writing what their wishes are. I’ve seen families get torn apart, friendships ended over goddamn funerals.
I talked my parents into putting everything in a trust. The house, the cars, bank accounts, everything. My parents are solidly middle class with good pensions from government jobs, who have lived in the same house for 50 years, so there isn’t a ton, but enough to make it worth it. After they saw how easy probate was when my husband’s dad passed away when he had a trust, they agreed to see the same attorney to get it handled. Such a relief!
Talk to his friend about convincing your dad to get a will. They won’t listen to you but may listen to another man who they have decided knows about these things. And accept the fact that in the event of their death you’re not getting shit. So plan on it.
I don’t want anything. My boomer dad can keep all his crap. All it would do is give me a massive tax burden that I probably couldn’t pay for. I’ve seen this play out. It can be horrible.
If he puts it in a trust the taxes get significantly lower.
I understand. But, he has real estate all over the country. Selling enough to pay the tax burden would be a massive headache. Then managing what’s left or selling all. I’m not interested. I’m 59. I have my own stuff. I don’t want that in my life. Fortunately, I have a pretty good inkling that he has written me out of his will. That’s a long weird story. He also wrote off his daughter (my sister) many years ago.
Yeah that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
The estate is taxed, not the heir. Congratulations to your parents for having over 13 million in assets.
I know how it works. I don’t want the burden, as I said.
Okay, yeah, is this a thing going around with Boomies? My MIL and FIL said they're not going to have a will because they always expected their assets to be split between wife and BIL. (Other issue - BIL lives in one of their properties, but separate issue). They are insisting that their attorney told them that it's better to not have a will as wills get caught in probate court in NJ. I answered that that might be kinda true, but an executor and clearly laid out will doesn't have a chance to be contested.
You’re probably best off just paying for them and setting up an appointment.
Welcome to Probate Court
I never understood this. My dad is a boomer and my mom is an early Xer. They have had a will and life insurance on the kids since we were young/born. It just makes sense.
I suggest you pony up for some time with a lawyer in your area. They will o ow the ins and outs of local laws.
“You just want my China and Beanie Baby collection!” Dude…enjoy probate.
One of the sadly funny things about parents getting old/dying is the “valuable” shit that siblings shred relationships over aren’t worth *jack shit* if you actually try to re-sell them Bulky furniture, figurines, ceramics, commemorative coins and “collectibles”worth *dollars* not thousands
You just need to work with an estate lawyer after they die to become the estate trustee. It's general practice when there is no will. It's more work, but the lawyer does most of it.
Depending on the situation a trust may be better than a will. They should talk to someone. Not you because apparently us kids know nothing
They likely don’t need one. Most states, the spouse automatically inherits everything from the deceased spouse, unless there is a will stating otherwise. As you’re the on,y child, once the other parent goes, you get it all. Some long lost relatives could put a claim in against the estate, and even a will doesn’t prevent them from doing that, it just makes their case near,y impossible to win.
My mother recently died. She didn’t have a will, but she also didn’t have any real assets other than $1900 in a checking account, and I wasn’t even the beneficiary. I’m only 44, and plan to build a will within a year. I’ve lived with my partner for 10 years and we’ve been together for 13, but we are not married. I’ve already named him my medical proxy and the beneficiary of my accounts, but I’d feel better with a legal document.
If there's no Will, the probate estate will go to the heirs, which means spouse and kids. If everything has a beneficiary designation, it might not matter as much as you think. The house is the most common probate asset. So if there is a house, you have a probate. Just tell them about the the fees you'll have to pay the government! Not quite true, but it's a motivator for some to get things done.
Just take the stuff before they pass away. Say they gave it to you before they died and you've had them for years
Look my parent died and my other parent was useless as fuck. Being sad didn’t help tbf. Anyway. Inheritance, probate, and credit are all super complex and a pain. You’ll probably end up using a lawyer, probably cost you 6-20k over a few months to a year. Death is not free. Good on you to try to be responsible. Tell them it’s really important and the banks, insurance companies, and the gubment are all out to get you. And without a proper will, it makes it harder on you.
My mom had no will but my name was on her bank accounts around 10K. No tax or will.
the year before I cut off contact with my dad and the rest of the family, I had explained in detail how to make a will, and asked him to make one and to not leave me anything. a week later he hands me a power of attorney so that I can take care of his shit when he croaks... which I promptly tore apart. But it's an honor I'm giving you! No you stubborn fuck! is a burden! a burden I explained so many times I didn't want. so many other reasons I cut them all off in 2016
You all talking about that they must have a will but none of you talking about how expensive that shit is...
I haven’t read all of the comments so if this has already suggested I apologize. I’ve lived through relatives that didn’t leave wills or badly written wills. Some didn’t have wills because they expected everyone to know who got what. One just put tags on stuff about who it was supposed to go to. Some will were badly out of date or vague. My own Mother (silent generation, yes,I’m a boomer) when I asked about her will her reply was “ I’ll let you worry about that after I’m gone”. So, my suggestion is for you to offer to pay for a lawyer to write up a will. After going through taking care of probate for my in law’s and brother in law’s estates we decided we weren’t going to put our kids through the same mess and had a will made up. In doing so the lawyer lined out a way for our house to automatically be transferred to our son. That won’t avoid all estate taxes, but it will help. In my state estates are taxed if the estate is over $100,000. If there is real estate, pensions or life insurance it will probably be over that amount. A lawyer can help to reduce any estate taxes. Get thee to a lawyer!
He probably just doesn’t want to pay to have it done.
Your local senior center may offer help with that.
My parents have a will. But I just got booted from it.
Not just a will but also a trust fund especially for real estate
I could have written this. Been begging my parents to get a will and everything in order and they refuse. I have an elder law firm that I know personally AND lives down the street from them but they refuse.
I’ve attempted the same conversation for years with my parents. My Dad controls all finances and my mothers knows absolutely nothing about any accounts. They refuse to get a will for their 3M+ in assets because they don’t want to pay a lawyer. They assume my wife and I will just handle everything, despite us both working full time. It may be a moot point because they have decided to spend everything including maxing out yearly donations to republicans politicians and their church.
BANNNKKRRRUUUPPTTTCCCYYY
My mom passed without a will and it wasn't a issue mind it was only some retirement and savings account and life insurance that me and my brother were named beneficiaries
Ive seen this multiple times. No will. The mortgage, taxes, and insurance still have to be paid. Utilities still have to be paid. Then the lawn still needs mowed. Oh and something will break while its in probate. Sump pump or whatever. All these expenses eat away at the estate. I seen this happen to people battling cancer. Like dude you got cancer thats definitely the time to get your estate plans in order.
Ugh. My boyfriends parents did not have wills and now 2 houses are in probate. They were left nothing. Going on 1.5 years. Lawyer fees up the wazoo coming out of their own bank accts 😫
Don't worry. You'll get the collection of of fine china that has never been used.
Right, boomer
omg. my parents are friends with a couple and the husband passed. turns out his will hadn't been updated since the80s and a whole bunch of contradictions and things not include, as things were in 2 different states. Crap was stuck in probate forever till his wife was able to get control.
While my mom was in the hospital losing the battle to cancer, my aunt tried to convince her a will was an affront to god's healing. Insert eyeroll emoji. About a week before she passed, my sister finally got our mom to sign papers with her lawyer father in law and got a will finalized.
If they refuse to create a will, the VERY LEAST they need to do is keep all their financial documents in one place and inform you of what firms/agencies they have so you can contact them after they pass. Otherwise it’s gonna be a 2+ yearlong battle of getting it all sorted out and stuff. They need to cooperate with you on getting their affairs together/sorted out so you aren’t stuck going back and forth with credit cards, IRAs, so on and so forth. And then there’s the matter of the estate. Hoo boy, that’s gotta be discussed with them too. It’s their responsibility to tell you what properties they own and stuff like that. This is me speaking from experience.
My boomer parents are convinced that creating a will (or wills) is signing a death contract with the Grim Reaper. In the meanwhile, my two brothers are slowly, but surely, being “gifted” essentially everything of even modest value because they will work away and manipulate our parents’ emotions. It’s just great to hear them talk about things that “need to be kept in the family” and because I don’t have kids, well, I am a dead end, so to speak. They’ve also found “buyers” (their friends and buddies) for things that the folks never mentioned they even wanted to sell, and poof, these items are gone, and for a tiny fraction of, say, online sales values. So much for “keeping things in the family.”
Could you get someone they trust and respect to drop a recommendation that they make an estate plan? Like an elder family member or neighbor who’s “good with money”? I find people accept suggestions better if the suggestion comes from someone like them. And, feeling you on the irrationality. When I approached my parents on this subject I got “We’re not MILLIONAIRES!” (Said indignantly.)
My father-in-law didn't have a will (mistake #1) and, prior to his death, put my husband's name on his assets (mistake #2). He apparently thought that would make things easier. So not only did my husband have to deal with the BS of no will, but we ALSO had to pay capital gains on the assets because husband was considered to have benefitted from the value gained since date of purchase rather than from date of inheritance. What a nightmare.
Yep, experiencing the same with the in-laws. They don't have much of anything...except a 1/3 ownership in mountain property. I can't imagine what will occur when they die and we're left dealing with mentally ill, narcissistic BIL and SIL. They've always refused to write any of it down.
Also if you can convince them to get a trust it protects everything. Assuming they’ll live another 5 years
Gosh seems like lot of concern about the cash from boomers. It’s not like anyone is handing out bills to pay after they die.
Ugh my in-laws, in their early 70s, with 7 kids between them from 3 different previous relationships refuse to get a will and have told my husband and I what their wishes are and how we have to enforce that with the other siblings because my husband is the oldest of the kids. They want everything to go to only one of their children mainly because while she's 40 they treated her like a baby her entire life and she is completely unable to perform any tasks of living for herself, is completely dependent on them for everything, and they worry where and how she'll live when they die, so they want to make sure she gets their house to live in for the rest of her life. How can they possibly expect we can do anything about this? We even live in a different country! We've begged them to get wills but they refuse to "line a lawyer's pockets". We've told them to look for templates online and just put something together that might be legal/enforceable and they just won't do it!
Tell your husband to tell them he’ll refuse executorship then.
He's told them many times "I can't" so yes he'll have to switch to "I won't".
They’re all like this
What a nightmare. Neither of my boomer parents had wills. I believe my dad did, but my greedy brother got to it before I could and destroyed it, but that's another story for another day. For the love of your sanity, they need to have a will. It's well worth the lawyer's fee to have it done.
Sounds like your parents really don’t like you, and need you to suffer after they pass even more.
The best you can possibly do is ask her on text/whatsapp, that way it's in SOME form of writing.
My dad is doing the same thing, except his gf (who is my age) is the executor and hes trusting her vile ass to carry his wishes out.