 | | Wills and Trusts Checklist | | | | To keep yourself on track to healthier personal finances,
start here by setting due dates for your own financial to-dos. Click the button
next to each item to add it to your Yahoo! Calendar or
print out this checklist of
to-do's and check off each item as you complete it. Get ready to
face your
financial fears today!
For more information on each item, refer back to Suze Orman's article:
"Why You Also Need a Trust". | |
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| | Take the quiz - do you need a trust?My friends, revocable trusts aren't just for folks with oodles of zeros on their net worth statement. Check out my
Should You Be Trusted?
questionnaire at the end of this article. Anyone who answers YES to even one question should
seriously consider getting a revocable trust. | | | | | |
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| | Just say no to JTWROSNow, I want to anticipate one argument you might hear which goes something like this: You don't need a trust. Just
get a will and then make sure you own your property in Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship (JTWROS). I have seen
this mentioned in a national magazine and it is stupid, stupid, stupid. | | | | | |
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| | Besides a Revocable Trust, You Need a Will As WellIn addition to the revocable trust, you still need a will. You read that right. No, I am not contradicting myself.
Here's the deal. The revocable trust will handle the ownership and disbursement of every asset you put in that trust.
But you want to have a "back-up" or "pour-over" will for any asset you may have forgotten to put in the estate.
Perhaps you didn't get around to updating the trust to include a new asset you acquired a few years after funding the
trust. That's where the will comes in handy; you are ensuring that any extra assets will be "poured over" into your
estate upon your death. | | | | | |
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| | When you go see a lawyer, make sure that this is how the charge and treat youUse the list
at the end of this article to make sure that you are getting everything out of your lawyer. | | | | | |
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