Don’t Let The Government Decide What To Do With Your Children and Your Money If You Die!

November 24, 2007 By Matthew Paulson

If you’re looking for a sure-fire way to add further pain and suffering from your family in the event of your death, don’t get a will! Instead of having the recently deceased’s wishes followed for what should happen to their money and who should watch over their children, the government gets to decide for the family! It would take all of an hour for a person to get a will made to protect his or her family, but 50% of Americans do not have a will to speak of! A lot of people have the notion that only wealthy people need wills because they have a lot of money to hand out, but the reality s that only 1 in 3 individuals with a significant amount of wealth have a will! If you don’t have a will, suck it up, face your own mortality and get a will before the end of the day.

If you don’t have a will, the state can legally take away your children from whoever they’re with, put them in a foster home temporarily and then decide according to some cookie cutter formula as to who gets to keep your children! The intentions of who the god parents were could have been perfectly clear between the family, but unless it’s written down on paper and notarized, it does not matter to the government! Not only could your children end up with someone you don’t want raising them, your money could be given to a relative that you really don’t even like! Depending on which state you live in, your spouse might not even get all of your money. In some of the more conservative states if a husband dies and the couple has not been married for a year, the vast majority of the money will go to the husband’s family rather than his bride! You should be able to decide where your money goes when you die, but that won’t happen unless you get moving and get a will today!

Making a will is incredibly easy to do, unless you have a significant amount of wealth (say a net worth of $500,000 or more), you can do it yourself! There are two sites which offer state specific legal forms to create wills with, which are LegalZoom.com and US Legal Forms. There’s also a piece of software called WillMaker which is highly respected. You’ll probably pay $20 or $30 for the form or the software, but that’s a steal when the alternative is to let the government decide what to do with your children and your money!

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