Page 41 - Book10E

Using your beneficiaries as will witnesses
Never use a beneficiary as a witness to your will. Doing so is a legal conflict of interest and could result in your beneficiary not receiving what you have stated in your will. The same person as both a benefi- ciary and a will witness casts a shadow of doubt about what influence that person may have had on you, and could open the door for other beneficiaries to claim that you were influenced by that “unscrupulous” person.
If you use an attorney, have his or her office staff members serve as witnesses. If you don’t use an attorney, make sure that your witnesses are not named as beneficiaries in your will.
Failing to factor in the personal side
The decisions you make about your estate that are specified in your will should include your “non-monetary,” or personal, objectives in addition to your monetary (financial) goals. Don’t just go “by the numbers”; instead, really think through the choices you make and consider family, emotional, and other considerations.
For example, suppose you have three children and two of them are very well off financially while the third is a struggling would-be social worker. Family tradition may dictate that you split your estate equally among your three children, but you may wish to leave more to your not-so-well-off child and less to the others. The choice is yours.
Keeping important information from your attorney
Make sure you tell your attorney everything that you can think of— even personal, sometimes painful, or embarrassing items—when you are deciding what to put in your will. Even if you don’t think some long-ago item is relevant, err on the side of too much information.
Avoiding Common Mistakes and Problems in Your Will 31