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Attorney Peter Daigle Talks About Wills And Probate

 

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today on “This needs to be said”, there’s an elephant in the room and we’re going to talk about it. Our friend, apirnie look at me messing up the words, apirnie. That’s 30 feet a day. Go ahead and come. I think we’re going to have to edit that one out. I don’t know. I might leave it out. Attorney Peter Daigle is here with us today to talk about wheels and maybe I laughed out of being nervous because it is a tough topic. And I remember not having a wheel for my dad when he passed away. And I think it was because the belief is that poor people don’t need a wheel and really you’re not poor. There was plenty for us to fight over that my dad left behind. So it may have helped us out for him to give us some guidance on how that should go. And it may have also saved some bitter emotions, but also a wheel is for many other things. So Peter is going to come into the conversation and share with us some things to consider. Why do we need a wheel and how to prepare and to help dispel the myth if you didn’t believe it, when I said it, that a wheel is not just for people that are wealthy, hey Peter, sorry. I messed up in the beginning.

Okay, Katherine. No, it’s wonderful. Is this, so it’s always a pleasure to hear your voice and talk to you.

Let me on,

So let me give us the basic information. So, will, the purpose of a will is to decide who gets what, because if you don’t have a will, the state decides who gets what, and when, what I mean by the state, I mean that there are laws that decide how your assets are to be divided up. Now, each state is different. Okay and so, generally speaking, if you, if you die without a, will, your children would inherit, your assets. But if you’re, but you, if you’re married, your spouse generally gets half. Okay. So your spouse was split with your children, but every state’s different. Okay. If you want to find out in your state, so it gets carved up according to a law. So if you don’t want your children to have it, and you want your spouse to have it, and you know, you’ve gotta be able to, you need to have a will, draft ahead of time.

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Okay. Now, no, a will has to be, is a formal document that in most states that has to be witnessed by two people and notarized. So if you sit there and your kitchen table and write up a will and you sign it, it’s not going to be valid. Okay. So it’s not going to be valid and it’s going to go contrary to what you might’ve wanted to have done. Okay. So if you’re going to do a, you want to have one done properly, that’s the first suggestion that I have for you today. Now when you draft a will for assets, like furniture, not furniture, here’s me like money and, houses and cars and things like that, but it’s not meant for personal effects. Okay, so because personal effects keep changing. Now you could say, I give all my personal effects to so-and-so, but you know, as you know, things change and you might want to have a favorite niece or a nephew, or our brother or sister, get a specific item.

Those do not go in the will. Okay. So let’s say you have glass figurines or something like that. Something, some stuff that you’ve saved over the years you can create another separate piece of paper that does not need to be witnessed. And it does not need to be notarized. You would say, I give my, my, my train, you know, set to so-and-so. I give my, my glass, you know, swaps and, you know, figurines to someone else. So those are done, that’s called a schedule distribution. And you can do that, just hand, write that with on a, on a sheet of paper. Okay. So those were the will is for the money and, and, and those types of that and money in property. Now, if you want to do a combination of avoiding a will or making, making sure that the will is going to be valid, because you, you know, may not have done it ahead of that properly.

You can also head that off by having your accounts, bank accounts and property put in joint accounts before you pass away. So if you had a bank account, for instance, that was with your daughter, she would automatically get the money. You’re not need a will. Okay. If you had a house and you wanted to put your, your spouse or your children on the house with you, you don’t have to go through probate for that. So what probate does that word probate means it means a settling over the state, according to the will, or according to the laws of what’s called and testy test to see which is dying without a well, okay. So, if someone would have, whenever somebody dies, the, the attorney for the, for the estate of a probate attorney, would administer the estate, and divide the assets up according to the will or, or according to what the laws are, land, which, which was basically some of the children and some of the spouse. Okay. So that’s a really brief overview of that. Any questions at all well, that’s part of the discussion.

Well, actually we got some, some, Ooh, oh, that I didn’t know, like needs to going into a wheel and what doesn’t need to go into a wheel. So that’s good to know, because I didn’t know that I thought, like, everything that you have a rocking chair, whatever, like you had to put it in the wheel. So as we begin, as, as we’re having this conversation, what are some things I would need to consider as I’m sitting at Cause I actually need to revisit my will being married a year, so got to revisit my, and he has to revisit his wheel. What are some things that we really should be paying attention to inside of that?

Well, I mean, obviously it’s the children that, you know, from a previous marriage or there’s children out there, you know, you have to decide how those would get, you know, dealt with, when somebody passes away. So, I mean, these are all obviously tough discussions, that you have to have with your spouse, and then you should really consult an attorney to have the documents drafted. Okay, you know, and typically wills want no more than $500 anyway. So it’s not a huge, legal expense to have the will drafted but I would say to you that you want to have those hard discussions as to, you know, what, what happens to someone would to die. So you really gotta do the, do the business end of it for us. Okay. So with the business end, the size of it, you know, how do you, who are we going, gonna, we’re gonna leave please fill out.

And then also you can say, well, let’s, let’s make it simpler on are the people who would have to deal with our state. And let’s just set up some joint accounts. So you could talk to your husband about that and say, listen, I’ll put you on my bank account. And you put me on yours for the purposes of something would have happen to either one of us that we wouldn’t have to go through probate. Okay. I mean, those were a couple of basic things and then if you have a house as a person in the house,

You said the wheel is more for the financial organization of things. Because when you mentioned you don’t have to put up personal effects, like some big hearings, you prize item in the wheel, right. It sounds like Nancy versus nonfinancial.

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Exactly! Yep. Okay. And when it comes to that to do doing the, the personal effects, you know, those things change with time. So you might have something, you know, like figuring is getting figured out, you might decide your lifestyle. You just want to give them away. Okay. And you give them away during your lifetime and then, you know, you might buy something else. And so, you know, you might have something else that you want to give away an Oriental rug or, or something, a piece of artwork or something that’s really a personal value too. Okay. And then you can just amend that, but you know, it’s kind of early in life to be able to decide where you want your, your living room set to go to unnecessarily. So you could just say, Hey, I leave all my personal possessions so my spouse or my sister, whatever. And then you can become more detailed down the road if you’d like, you know, because I mean, you give you living a set so-and-so living room set to be gone, you know, two years from now. So,

Okay. It could be right. Okay. Well, that makes sense to me. So it’s one of the questions I had, but you answered it is what’s the drawback of not having a wheel. And you actually answered that right away was that the state will decide what to do. And does the state ever decide to give it to the family Okay.

The only according to the laws of the land is, so for instance, if, if the state in the state of Massachusetts half goes to your children and half goes to your spouse, so…

That’s not what you want your spouse to have everything and not your children initially, then you have to have a will. Otherwise your spouse gets lose out on that. If you’re, if a house is held in your name, for instance, and you want your spouse to have a house upon your death, your children are going to have a say in it, you don’t have a will. And the house is going to have to get sold and your spouse could be out, you know; a place to live.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It, it, it definitely helps. It definitely helps make sure that you cause these conversations don’t need to be had when you’re upset or you’re like angry about something. And so once the decision is made, it’s there and it helps you for me, it would have been peace of mind just to know what my dad wanted, because everybody had an opinion, since there was no wheel, there were no instructions. There were no preparations. And so I felt like I was disrespecting my elders in the family and not doing the right tradition or whatever. I didn’t know that I was doing wrong. I was messing it up terribly. I really would appreciate it some guidance so that, that to me emotionally would have been a big saving. We don’t, we don’t have a whole lot of, time left today. So I’m not going to go into another question. I’m just going to have to have you come back on to this needs to be said, we can continue talking about it, cause I’m sure you have some stories.

Oh, okay. So this is good. This is, this was a good start. And sometimes you’d be better off just taking small steps and giving them some basic information before you go on too much anymore. But put the folks get a chance to digest that. So

Yeah, I think so. So tell people how to get in touch with you outside of “This needs to be said”,

So you can reach me, Peter Daigle. My phone number is (508) 771-7444. Or you can reach me at Daigle law office. If you just Google Daigle office, you can email me to that or contact you to that, or we information that’s contained on the website.

Fantastic! Until next time Peter have a

Superintendent. Okay, captain. See ya! Bye-bye now. Thank you.

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