MAKING OUT A WILL IS NOT ENOUGH

You have lots of company if you are reluctant to make a will.

If you are too busy or superstitious to write a will that spells out who is to get what when you die, your assets will pass in accordance with your state's intestacy laws. They decide where property goes when a person dies without a will, regardless of what the family prefers and whether it makes sense from a tax standpoint.

For example, the intestacy laws could disinherit someone whom you particularly wanted to benefit and send your property to someone that you never intended to benefit.

The only way to avoid these occurrences is to have a will or some other advance arrangement, such as joint ownership of property with "the right of survivorship." This means that when one joint owner dies, the other automatically becomes the owner.

Many couples mistakenly think that there is no need to bother with wills because they own most of their property jointly. Or they think that only the husband needs a will because the property automatically goes to the wife on his death or because she has little property in her own name.

These couples do not think about what could happen if they are both involved in an accident, in which he dies and she lives for a short while. All of their joint holdings (bank accounts and stocks, to cite some common examples) will become hers. Because she left no will, the assets would then pass under the intestacy law to her family. So a husband and wife both need wills even though they own their property jointly.