Probating your will with a blended family is crucial to eliminating confusion and frustration after you pass away. Consider you and your spouse. Perhaps you’ve been married for many years, but have no children together, yet you both each have children from your previous marriages. And because you are responsible, you and your spouse go down and have your wills made, specifying that each of your assets is to be left to one another, and then divided equally between all of the combined children once the surviving spouse also passes away. This course of action is seemingly ideal, and is often what most people decide they want to do.
However, eventually you pass away. At first, your spouse has no issues accessing all of the liquid assets left behind. Several years go by and finally your spouse decides to move into a smaller house. Your kids are all grown and your beloved simply needs less space. However, because you and your spouse bought the home together, the title company needs the will to be probated. The statutory time limit to probate a will is only four years from the date of death, so the process will now be much harder. Your spouse will not be able to file the application to probate since the law dictates that an applicant can be prohibited from probating a will if the “person was responsible for the will not being probated during the four-year time limit.” Furthermore, if your spouse does attempt to file for probate outside the four year time frame, all interstate heirs must be notified and provide consent for the will to be probated. However, at that point, intestacy heirship statutes are already kicking in – meaning your children may not want to authorize the probating of the will in order to inherit everything themselves. Before you know it, the whole situation is a big mess and your spouse in right in the center of it all.
The good news is there is one thing you can do to prevent your loved one from suffering any unnecessary frustrations after you’re gone. Put your will – and trust – in the outstandingly capable hands of our seasoned attorneys at Aiello Law Group. We will help you finalize all of your end-of-life planning as quickly as efficiently as possible, ensuring everything is legally sound and ready to hold up in court if need be. Call us, today, at 313.964.4900 or fill out the form in the sidebar or on our contact page, and learn more about how we can help you.
