Does It All Go to Your Spouse?

Video

Hi folks, it’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. I’m back today with another talk about Indiana estate planning. And today is going to be a quick one, but a very important talk. I have seen lately on social media, you know, Reddit, Nextdoor, kind of these local social platforms, people talking about Indiana intestate succession rules and getting it wrong.  

“It All Goes to Spouse?” No! Think Again!

So you see things like “if I die without a will what happens? What happens to my stuff? Do I need a will if I’m just leaving everything to my spouse?”  

And there is apparently a persistent, pervasive belief out there that if you die your spouse gets everything by default. That is not the law in Indiana. OK? That’s wrong. It’s not true that your spouse gets everything when you die by default. If you have kids, your kids get 50% of your intestate estate, so spouse gets half and kids get half.  

That’s a very different outcome, and most people don’t really want that right?  

How to Make It So Everything DOES Go to Spouse

Most people who are married with kids want their spouse to get everything first. And then the surviving spouse gets to decide how and when it goes to kids.  

So if you want it to work like that, you need to make a will or a trust. You need to do some estate planning, you cannot rely on the default if what you want is everything to go to your spouse.  

Reasons to Plan Ahead

We can talk about why you don’t want half going to your kids right away, but I think most people understand that intuitively, right? You do not want minor children to come into large sums of money because then you need to manage those assets for their benefit until they’re 18 and then when they turn 18, they have access to the money. Same thing with adult children. You know, maybe you don’t want your adult children getting an inheritance right away when you’re still trying to provide for your surviving spouse.  

And there’s potential conflict there, right? I’ve had a few cases where families have agreed to put inheritances in trust to kind of restrict access, after the fact, when there wasn’t good enough estate planning, but that depends on everybody getting along and depends on the children kind of signing away their right to immediate access to the money. 

So you know it’s a problem we can solve sometimes, but it adds a risk of conflict. So you want to avoid that, right? If your plan is everything to my spouse, that’s a great plan, but you need to make documents to do it. You cannot rely on the default rule, because the default rule is not all to my spouse.

References and Links

I’ll try to link maybe, maybe some places I’ve seen those comments.  

And I’ll certainly add a reference to the intestate law. I.C. 29-1-2-1 So you can see what the law actually is.

I don’t know where this… I don’t know where this belief came from, but it’s out there.  

So I hope I’ve set things straight and that’s all for today. So give me a call or book your appointment online. We can talk about your estate planning. I’d love to write your will or trust and get you set up correctly. All right. Thanks for watching. Bye now.