Safe Places to Keep Your Will

If you have written a will, you are within your rights to feel a great sense of relief. Even if you never get around to making more progress on your estate plan, you have still taken the important first step. Your will is not really complete, though, until you complete the formal requirements to make it legally enforceable. A Word document on your computer that lists the provisions of your will and leaves blanks for signatures is not sufficient. You must print your will and sign it in the presence of two witnesses, who must be adult residents of New York. Once you do that, it is time to celebrate; perhaps you can even have a will signing party, where you and the witnesses toast with champagne once the ink is dry on the will. Of course, the next step in administering a deceased person’s will is for the person representative of the testator’s estate to present the will to the probate court. What you write in your will is no one’s business but yours; you do not even have to let the witnesses read the will before they sign the signature page, but your will cannot make your wishes come true if no one can find it, so it is essential to store it in a safe place. For help writing a legally enforceable will and finding a safe place to keep it, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.

What Happens If You Write a Will and No One Can Find It?

When the personal representative of your estate presents your will to the probate court and the court admits it, the probate court then has a legal duty to enact the provisions of your will, distributing your property as your will indicates, after the estate pays your outstanding taxes and settles your debts. If this does not happen, someone can still open your estate and persuade the court to name them as personal representative and then administer your estate according to the laws of intestate succession, which are the laws that the court follows when there is no will. Under the laws of intestate succession, the decedent’s closest surviving relatives inherit the estate.

The Four Safest Places to Keep Your Will

The best place to keep your will is in a drawer at home where you keep the rest of your important papers. If you don’t feel safe doing that, such as if you think your disinherited relatives will find it, you can keep it in a safe deposit box at the bank, with the understanding that, after you die, a relative can present your death certificate to the bank and get access to the safe deposit box. You can also file it with the surrogate’s court; the downside to this is that, if you make a new version of your will, you will have to file the new version; if you don’t, it can lead to confusion about which version of the will is the legally enforceable one. The safest option is to deposit your will with your estate planning lawyer.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you draft or update your will, make it legally enforceable, and store it in a safe place.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

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