This is an actual message I received from the ABA-PTL list, which is a list for the discussion of estate planning and estate administration issues by attorneys, financial planners, etc.
Here is the summary. A decedent didn’t want to pay lawyers to change her revocable trust and had her non-attorney son do it. He used online forms and, instead of avoiding probate, Mom triggered it and the estate is now going to have to deal with the charities who were cut out of the will. It’s going to cost many, many times more to fix this than the few hundred dollars it would have cost to change it properly. This is an excellent example of penny wise and pound foolish.
Our client is the Personal Representative of his mother’s estate and successor Trustee of his mother’s Revocable Trust. A year ago, mother decided she wanted to change some of the pre-residuary gifts in her revocable trust, but was tired of paying attorneys, so she asked her son, a doctor, to create the revisions for her, which he did himself.
Her son, using forms he found online, created a codicil to his mother’s Last Will to remove 10 charities and his wife (which were listed in her Trust) and to increase the gifts made to himself, his children and a nephew. The Will is a traditional pour over will, which provided no pre-residuary gifts. Our clients mother died last week, and he provided these documents to us for review. As far as we know, all of mother’s assets are in the Revocable Trust and there are no assets subject to administration under the Will. In addition, the Trust does not contain a provision directing that gifts under the Will are satisfied.
Has anyone seen a situation like this where it is clear that the decedent’s intent was to modify her trust though it was ineffectively done? What is your experience with negotiating with the excluded beneficiaries?
Thank you in advance for any insight!