7 ms·

This is great advice all around, but get a local lawyer involved to prepare your will. Even in US, there is not a single set of laws that apply to wills and po

This is great advice all around, but get a local lawyer involved to prepare your will. Even in US, there is not a single set of laws that apply to wills and power of attorney. It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work and ultimately be ending up with a document that has little legal basis. Do your loved ones a favor - hire a lawyer to do it. It's not free, but they'll do the actual paperwork, and you'll get the comfort of knowing it's done right.

pzxc 11y ago
There are a few grammatical errors in these documents as well that do not inspire confidence. Also, you better be damn sure that you can trust the person you give power of attorney to -- the document provided here assigns power of attorney immediately, not on incapacitation/death, and allows the person you designate to gift themselves up to $13,000 a year of your own property without your consent. Considering the laws of the 50 states are sometimes very different, and these documents cover a wide range of legal topics, I think you'd have to be an idiot to use these documents without running them by a lawyer in your state, because they might not have the consequences you think they have. Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. www.uslegalforms.com has been around for a long time now, and they at least have state-specific documents. Use them if you're going to use anything without consulting a lawyer. But really, pay a lawyer, it's worth it. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
- jrs235 11y ago
  Good advice. I think this got upvoted because it offers a monthly email nudge/reminder and hopefully the site/service will stay on top of future issues related to staying on top of keeping your stuff together. But yeah, talk to a lawyer to ensure state specific issues are properly covered/handled.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts. They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface: * who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc) * who to turn bank accounts over to * a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do if I do sooner than expected What organization is typically entrusted to do this sort of task? I don't mind paying for my loved ones to be secure and guided after my death, I just want an org that I can 1) trust and 2) will be around for 100+ years.
    - __z 11y ago
      You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time. I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide them proof of my death, and then they would say "Here are your options, and the consequences of each."
        __z 11y ago
        The social security administration notifies banks of your death.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        I'm curious how they do this. Do they provide a list of SSNs on a schedule to financial orgs through the Fed?
- jobu 11y ago
  > Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. My guess is it struck a chord with people similar to myself - young family and minimal EOL planning. (although the snarky domain definitely helps) For us, the biggest problem has been deciding who should take care of the kids if something happens to both myself and my spouse. The only members of our family that aren't shitty people or very flaky are elderly or have medical issues preventing them from caring for children. (And all of our close friends have kids and full lives of their own.) I would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for determining the least shitty choice in a situation like that.
  - vtbassmatt 11y ago
    Do you have any friends with kids of their own? We found in our planning that the people who had kids of similar age to ours were the best choice. They're already dealing with "kid stuff" and, other than finances, adding more kids doesn't totally change the nature of their life. Make sure to have life insurance, and have your lawyer set it up as a trust for the child's well-being. You can designate someone other than the caretaker of the child to be the trustee of the trust if you want to decentralize responsibility, though in our case we found that unnecessary. In our case, we recognized that additional kids would mean our designees need a bigger house, so we took a very liberal view of what constitutes the children's well-being. Also keep in mind that you may revise your choices over time. We reasoned that her friend is the best choice for this 5 years, but when our daughter gets a bit older, we can reevaluate and see who in our then-social-circle is the ideal.
  - jcadam 11y ago
    I'm in a similar situation. The other members of both sides of our family are all either flaky, dirt poor, or too old to take care of our kids. And one of our children is autistic and will likely need long-term care when she's an adult. Maybe one of our other children will step up when the time comes, but I can't count on that. My plan is to live forever.
    - sukilot 11y ago
- thehoff 11y ago
  It's at least a checklist and covers stuff you should be thinking about but may not have thought of (even if not financial such as the Thoughts section). For instance, my wife and I need more videos of us and not just the kid. If something happened to me tomorrow I would love it if my wife could show him videos of me when he gets older. I agree that maybe the site needs a disclaimer that getting a lawyer is better but for some isn't a generic form better than nothing? Not a lawyer either so not entirely sure about that.
  - immy 11y ago
    For the videos, you two might want to record some of your stories and values. If you have iPhones, I've built an app that guides you through it -- http://www.oakvideos.com http://www.oakvideos.com
- aasarava 11y ago
  RE ring votes: There are a suspicious number of one-sentence / add-no-value comments on this all posted about an hour ago.
  - Red_Tarsius 11y ago
    I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message of OP is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", but "I'm a wake up call, now go and get things done".
- Red_Tarsius 11y ago
  > Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. Or maybe it's because the site is a useful checklist of what we should do to prevent death from completely destroying our family. I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", the pdfs are described as templates. The core message is: Get your shit together now and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
  - PirateDave 11y ago
    I thought this is a great starting point. Also, after looking through the actual wills, they are already filled out with George Washington's information so the legal documents are used as an example, not for actual legal use. Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :) This site is helpful to let me know which parts I overlooked like simple things like passwords or account access.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      > Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :) Who cares? I'd make "get your shit together" a condition of inheriting anything from me if it had any legal standing.
  - TheGrassyKnoll 11y ago
    I just coughed up my email to get the reminders, because, (employers don't read this:) I'm a lazy procrastinating POS. I'll probably use LegalZoom to get the forms if I ever do get off my ass and get it done.
- dissentertainer 11y ago
  > Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this. If you view this as an MVP of an open source repository for EOL information then it makes total sense that it got upvoted here. If we can keep our code dry, why can't we keep our lives dry?
- the_watcher 11y ago
  HN voting rings are fairly tough to actually get working. I doubt this site used one. Also, a small number of upvotes from varying accounts (in terms of age, location, reputation, etc) can cause a post to hit the front page.
vermontdevil 11y ago
Exactly! My dad remarried and moved to Georgia. He didn't change the will at all thinking all are set. When he passed away, I found out that the will is invalidated because that's how it works in Georgia's legal system. Luckily my dad's wife is a nice woman and worked with me to ensure the estate went through probate properly. But always double check when your life's circumstances change (new residence, etc)
Spooky23 11y ago
Great advice. Even with a will, in some places the probate process is very expensive and onerous. In many cases, it's a lot easier to use a simple trust mechanism vs. a will. 3 hours of attorney time now can avoid 50 hours + lots of calendar time later.
martin1975 11y ago
Did it through RocketLawyer myself, and they have attorneys to review it as well as to guarantee it's legal in the state you live in. I also did my living will through them, all legitimate.
VLM 11y ago
"It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work" You won't be doing a "whole lot of work", but anyway, what works really well is giving a lawyer professional paperwork from another state (or whatever) and telling him to fix it for your state's laws. They handle this kind of "translation" all the time because of people who moved in from another state, they might be a bit confused if you moved in from the state of "the internet" but it'll be less confusing than walking in with a completely blank slate. At least they'll have to ask a lot fewer questions and explain a lot fewer things. Spending money to telling a lawyer "i donno" can be very expensive compared to how cheap it is to tell him something like "I want the inheritance to work something similar to Wisconsin law" Think by analogy of doing desktop support for a guy who can't articulate anything clearer than "the internet is broken on the hard drive", its gonna cost him a lot. But if the guy walked in with professional documentation of his specific problem, its gonna be a lot cheaper.
marincounty 11y ago
If you have a big estate see a lawyer. If you don't, or cash strapped now, you can get by with Nolo press. If you can understand ROR, and programming, after reading their two books on wills and trusts, I think you can set up a trust and will, and skip the lawyer. On the will get two signatures from people not in the will, and it does not need to be notarized in California. If you want to exclude a child out of a estate you must explicitly state that in the will.(Some kids got a lot of cash early on. Explain to them you love them. Make sure they are doing well, if you exclude them.) I recently did a will for a friend. Her daughter took all the family money when her father died--leaving her mother with nothing. The ironic part is her daughter is a multimillionaire in LA, with a successful business. She took advantatage of a bad situation, and a angry dying man. So yes, I didn't feel it was immoral to exclude her from the will of that friend.
realdlee 11y ago
There are plenty of bad lawyers out there, so if you're going to hire one, please do the legwork (get referrals, speak to multiple candidates) to find a good, trusted one.

pzxc 11y ago

There are a few grammatical errors in these documents as well that do not inspire confidence. Also, you better be damn sure that you can trust the person you give power of attorney to -- the document provided here assigns power of attorney immediately, not on incapacitation/death, and allows the person you designate to gift themselves up to $13,000 a year of your own property without your consent. Considering the laws of the 50 states are sometimes very different, and these documents cover a wide range of legal topics, I think you'd have to be an idiot to use these documents without running them by a lawyer in your state, because they might not have the consequences you think they have. Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. www.uslegalforms.com has been around for a long time now, and they at least have state-specific documents. Use them if you're going to use anything without consulting a lawyer. But really, pay a lawyer, it's worth it. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

jrs235 11y ago
Good advice. I think this got upvoted because it offers a monthly email nudge/reminder and hopefully the site/service will stay on top of future issues related to staying on top of keeping your stuff together. But yeah, talk to a lawyer to ensure state specific issues are properly covered/handled.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts. They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface: * who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc) * who to turn bank accounts over to * a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do if I do sooner than expected What organization is typically entrusted to do this sort of task? I don't mind paying for my loved ones to be secure and guided after my death, I just want an org that I can 1) trust and 2) will be around for 100+ years.
  - __z 11y ago
    You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time. I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide them proof of my death, and then they would say "Here are your options, and the consequences of each."
      - __z 11y ago
        The social security administration notifies banks of your death.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        I'm curious how they do this. Do they provide a list of SSNs on a schedule to financial orgs through the Fed?
jobu 11y ago
> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. My guess is it struck a chord with people similar to myself - young family and minimal EOL planning. (although the snarky domain definitely helps) For us, the biggest problem has been deciding who should take care of the kids if something happens to both myself and my spouse. The only members of our family that aren't shitty people or very flaky are elderly or have medical issues preventing them from caring for children. (And all of our close friends have kids and full lives of their own.) I would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for determining the least shitty choice in a situation like that.
- vtbassmatt 11y ago
  Do you have any friends with kids of their own? We found in our planning that the people who had kids of similar age to ours were the best choice. They're already dealing with "kid stuff" and, other than finances, adding more kids doesn't totally change the nature of their life. Make sure to have life insurance, and have your lawyer set it up as a trust for the child's well-being. You can designate someone other than the caretaker of the child to be the trustee of the trust if you want to decentralize responsibility, though in our case we found that unnecessary. In our case, we recognized that additional kids would mean our designees need a bigger house, so we took a very liberal view of what constitutes the children's well-being. Also keep in mind that you may revise your choices over time. We reasoned that her friend is the best choice for this 5 years, but when our daughter gets a bit older, we can reevaluate and see who in our then-social-circle is the ideal.
- jcadam 11y ago
  I'm in a similar situation. The other members of both sides of our family are all either flaky, dirt poor, or too old to take care of our kids. And one of our children is autistic and will likely need long-term care when she's an adult. Maybe one of our other children will step up when the time comes, but I can't count on that. My plan is to live forever.
  - sukilot 11y ago
thehoff 11y ago
It's at least a checklist and covers stuff you should be thinking about but may not have thought of (even if not financial such as the Thoughts section). For instance, my wife and I need more videos of us and not just the kid. If something happened to me tomorrow I would love it if my wife could show him videos of me when he gets older. I agree that maybe the site needs a disclaimer that getting a lawyer is better but for some isn't a generic form better than nothing? Not a lawyer either so not entirely sure about that.
- immy 11y ago
  For the videos, you two might want to record some of your stories and values. If you have iPhones, I've built an app that guides you through it -- http://www.oakvideos.com http://www.oakvideos.com
aasarava 11y ago
RE ring votes: There are a suspicious number of one-sentence / add-no-value comments on this all posted about an hour ago.
- Red_Tarsius 11y ago
  I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message of OP is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", but "I'm a wake up call, now go and get things done".
Red_Tarsius 11y ago
> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows. Or maybe it's because the site is a useful checklist of what we should do to prevent death from completely destroying our family. I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", the pdfs are described as templates. The core message is: Get your shit together now and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
- PirateDave 11y ago
  I thought this is a great starting point. Also, after looking through the actual wills, they are already filled out with George Washington's information so the legal documents are used as an example, not for actual legal use. Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :) This site is helpful to let me know which parts I overlooked like simple things like passwords or account access.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    > Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :) Who cares? I'd make "get your shit together" a condition of inheriting anything from me if it had any legal standing.
- TheGrassyKnoll 11y ago
  I just coughed up my email to get the reminders, because, (employers don't read this:) I'm a lazy procrastinating POS. I'll probably use LegalZoom to get the forms if I ever do get off my ass and get it done.
dissentertainer 11y ago
> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this. If you view this as an MVP of an open source repository for EOL information then it makes total sense that it got upvoted here. If we can keep our code dry, why can't we keep our lives dry?
the_watcher 11y ago
HN voting rings are fairly tough to actually get working. I doubt this site used one. Also, a small number of upvotes from varying accounts (in terms of age, location, reputation, etc) can cause a post to hit the front page.

vermontdevil 11y ago

Exactly! My dad remarried and moved to Georgia. He didn't change the will at all thinking all are set. When he passed away, I found out that the will is invalidated because that's how it works in Georgia's legal system. Luckily my dad's wife is a nice woman and worked with me to ensure the estate went through probate properly. But always double check when your life's circumstances change (new residence, etc)

Spooky23 11y ago

Great advice. Even with a will, in some places the probate process is very expensive and onerous. In many cases, it's a lot easier to use a simple trust mechanism vs. a will. 3 hours of attorney time now can avoid 50 hours + lots of calendar time later.

martin1975 11y ago

Did it through RocketLawyer myself, and they have attorneys to review it as well as to guarantee it's legal in the state you live in. I also did my living will through them, all legitimate.

VLM 11y ago

"It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work" You won't be doing a "whole lot of work", but anyway, what works really well is giving a lawyer professional paperwork from another state (or whatever) and telling him to fix it for your state's laws. They handle this kind of "translation" all the time because of people who moved in from another state, they might be a bit confused if you moved in from the state of "the internet" but it'll be less confusing than walking in with a completely blank slate. At least they'll have to ask a lot fewer questions and explain a lot fewer things. Spending money to telling a lawyer "i donno" can be very expensive compared to how cheap it is to tell him something like "I want the inheritance to work something similar to Wisconsin law" Think by analogy of doing desktop support for a guy who can't articulate anything clearer than "the internet is broken on the hard drive", its gonna cost him a lot. But if the guy walked in with professional documentation of his specific problem, its gonna be a lot cheaper.

marincounty 11y ago

If you have a big estate see a lawyer. If you don't, or cash strapped now, you can get by with Nolo press. If you can understand ROR, and programming, after reading their two books on wills and trusts, I think you can set up a trust and will, and skip the lawyer. On the will get two signatures from people not in the will, and it does not need to be notarized in California. If you want to exclude a child out of a estate you must explicitly state that in the will.(Some kids got a lot of cash early on. Explain to them you love them. Make sure they are doing well, if you exclude them.) I recently did a will for a friend. Her daughter took all the family money when her father died--leaving her mother with nothing. The ironic part is her daughter is a multimillionaire in LA, with a successful business. She took advantatage of a bad situation, and a angry dying man. So yes, I didn't feel it was immoral to exclude her from the will of that friend.

realdlee 11y ago

There are plenty of bad lawyers out there, so if you're going to hire one, please do the legwork (get referrals, speak to multiple candidates) to find a good, trusted one.