Stautz Law

Tag: TOD

  • Quitclaim Deeds vs. TOD Deeds

    Is a Quitclaim Deed the Same as a Transfer on Death Deed?

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    Good morning folks, it’s Andy Stautz with Stautz Law. I am back today for another topic on Indiana probate and estate planning. Today we’re answering a question I saw in a comment to one of my previous videos.

    The question is, Is a quitclaim deed the same as a transfer on death deed?

    Quitclaim Deeds Are Not the Same as TOD Deeds

    The answer is no, they are not the same. So I’ve talked in a bunch of places about transfer on death deeds, which I use pretty routinely as part of estate planning.  

    How Quitclaim Deeds Work

    Quitclaim deeds are different. So a quitclaim deed at its most basic is the owner, whoever makes the deed, saying, I quit, I quit, I give away my interest, It’s done. I make no claims on it. You’re quitting your claim.  

    That can be useful sometimes. I mean, if you’re just trying to just give everything away, just make sure it’s gone, you know, especially to “quiet” titles. If there’s a question about who owns what and one person says, I sign a quitclaim, I don’t own it, then that’s great because it’s final, it’s immediate 

    But that makes it kind of not a great, it doesn’t really make an estate planning tool because it is immediate, it’s irrevocable, no take backsies. Once you’ve signed a quit claim and given away your interest, it’s gone, right? It belongs to whoever you gave it to.  

    Quitclaim Deed Traps

    So sometimes I’ll see a quitclaim deed mistakenly used as part of a DIY estate plan, right? Someone will quitclaim a portion of their house to their heir or heirs. And what that does is splits up property ownership, right? It gives those other people immediate ownership of part or all of the house. That’s usually not something you’re trying to do because like I said, that means they actually own the house with you and they are jointly responsible for property taxes and other upkeep items. It also means they could conceivably sell their share or a creditor could come after their share. And if you change your mind, you can’t change, you can’t undo it without everybody’s cooperation, which might or might not be available. There are also tax consequences. Those get complicated really fast, but you’ve basically made a big gift.  

    So quitclaim deeds are powerful, but dangerous, right?  

    Comparing Transfer on Death Deeds

    Transfer on death deeds are less dangerous because all a transfer on death deed does is gives instructions to the county government on how to pass your property after you die. Okay, it’s instructions for later.  

    And even though you’re recording the deed now and naming a beneficiary now, that beneficiary doesn’t have any immediate right in your property. So if you move, you leave the transfer on death deed behind. If you change your mind, you can rewrite and re-record a new transfer on death deed. You don’t need the beneficiary’s permission to do that.  

    And the beneficiary can’t control anything in the present. Their creditors can’t reach their interest because they don’t have a present interest. They can’t sell their interest because they don’t have an interest, right?  

    Conclusion

    So a transfer on death deed, instructions for later. A quitclaim deed, washing your hands of it right away. So that’s kind of general differences. Is a quitclaim deed the same as a transfer on death deed? No, not at all. They both have conceivable uses though, as I’ve tried to just discuss.  

    To figure out which one you need in your scenario, that’s specific legal advice there. So you need to call an attorney. If you call me, talk to me, that’d be great. And we can discuss your project and how to accomplish your goals with the right type of deed for you. But as a general overview, I hope that answered the question and resolved some confusion. And like I said, for specific legal advice, reach out and we’ll work together. I hope that was an enjoyable talk and bye for now. 

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  • Transfer on Death Deeds: Partial Interests

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    Good morning, folks. It’s Andy Stautz with Stautz Law. I’m back today with another talk about an Indiana estate planning and probate topic. Today we’re talking about transfer on death deeds of partial interests, by which I mean also joint tenancies.

    Overview of Transfer on Death Deeds

    So I’ve talked before about Indiana transfer on death deeds, You should go look at that video if you haven’t seen it yet. Basically, a transfer on death deed is an instrument, a deed that you record on top of your existing house deed or property deed, and it adds an automatic beneficiary to your deed. That way, on your passing, there’s a non-probate transfer: which means it’s automatic, it happens right away. You don’t need to go to probate court.  

    Automatic non-probate transfer of the property from you to whoever you named.  

    (But it doesn’t create any, you know, present ownership in your beneficiary, right? So they can’t do anything about it. You just put the name on there.)  

    Scenarios with Partial Ownership Interests

    Okay, so that fundamental instrument is great. The most common scenario is definitely people who own their house and are giving it to either their kids or a family member. And usually people own their real estate fee simple outright. They just, they own it, it’s theirs.  

    Sometimes though, you see properties, especially family properties that have been passed down, or business properties that were acquired as part of a group of investors, where you’ve got a partial interest, some sort of joint tenancy. And again, I’ve got a separate, more extensive discussion of how joint tenancies work.  

    Transfer on Death Deeds and Partial Interests

    But you know, if you’ve got a one quarter share in a property, you know, or you’ve got a joint tenancy with someone else, Can you still use a transfer on death deed?  

    The answer is yes, you can use a transfer on death deed for partial interests, just like you can for like a complete fee simple interest, and the rules for that are right in the transfer. on Death Property Act. So that’s Indiana Code 32-17-14-11(e), [edit: I misspoke, it’s subsection “e” not “a”] and then it’s a list of one, two, three, four, five, six of what happens in different situations. So you can go look at the law for yourself.  

    I think the interesting ones are a tenancy in common. That’s where you just own some fraction. If you put a transfer on death deed on your fraction, it’s just it operates as to your interest. I.C. 32-17-14-11(e)(4). So if you own a quarter of your property, you can put a transfer on death deed for your quarter of the property. Doesn’t affect anyone else.  

    With husbands and wives, spouses who have this special “tenants by the entirety,” you can’t do it unless both spouses join. I.C. 32-17-14-11(e)(1). So you can’t just decide one day to add a beneficiary designation for like you, the husband’s beneficiaries or whatever, both spouses have to agree.  

    But the rules is different for a joint tenancy that’s not spouses. It’s for a joint tenancy, which often includes this right of survivorship, pretty cool if you’re the survivor, I suppose, recording a transfer on death deed breaks the joint tenancy and turns it into a tenancy in common. I.C. 32-17-14-11(e)(2). So you lose the right of survivorship. That’s quite a little trick in the law there.  

    It’s never come up for me yet, but I’m young. Maybe it will someday. So be careful and look at it.  

    Conclusion: TOD Still an Option

    But just because you own some fractional interest in a property doesn’t mean transfer on death deeds are off the table. And that’s good because they’re a really flexible planning tool. I’ve talked elsewhere about how and when you might want to use them, but the type of tenancy you have doesn’t necessarily stand in your way.  

    So if you want to talk about this or any other Indiana estate planning and probate topic, give me a call or e-mail. You’re on my website. You’ve got my contact information and I serve, you know, central Indiana and especially points south, so Indianapolis, Marion County. Greenwood, Johnson County, Montgomery County, all of that, Shelbyville. So give me a call and we can talk more, but I hope this general information of Indiana law was useful to you. Bye now.

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  • Estate Planning for LLCs

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    Hi folks, it’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. I am back for another talk about Indiana estate planning topic. Today we’re talking about estate planning for LLCs: really, for owners of LLCS. And this is kind of becoming increasingly common for small business owners, self-employed people to have to have their business entity set up as an LLC and then needing to do their estate planning and kind of coming up with a way to do that.  

    What is an LLC Ownership Interest?

    So to start with the very basics: your interest in an LLC is an asset that you own, right? You have equity. If you go out and form an LLC for your company or to be an independent contractor or self-employed… when you form an LLC, you are the owner. Your 100% interest, that’s an asset, right?  

    And we can talk about what that’s worth, but it is worth something.  

    Does an LLC go through probate?

    And unless you do something special, it’s a probate asset. So that means when you’re doing your estate planning, you need to think about the LLC interest, just like a bank account or a house, right? You need a way to figure out who it goes to and how.  

    So if you’ve got a will… Well…. You know, usually your will is going to have a “residuary clause” that’s going to say “Everything else I own,” (you know, maybe you give away some tangible property and maybe you deed the house…) again, the residuary clause has “everything else I own, all my other probate assets are distributed such such such”  

    Do you want your LLC to go through probate?

    OK, so that would catch an LLC interest. But you don’t necessarily want to put your LLC through probate. You might not want to put anything through probate and have to deal with, while the probate estate is being administered, you know your personal representative has to handle either running the business if it’s going to be a continuing operation or winding it up.  

    That can be complicated, you know, no one knows your business as well as you do so. It’s a big ask for your representative.  

    Estate Planning for Your LLC

    So you should probably do some planning in advance.  

    One obvious way to do it, of course, is with a trust. You know you can put an LLC interest into a revocable trust.  

    You can also make an LLC interest at a payable on death, a transfer on death asset. So we’ve talked in the past about transfer on death deeds for houses, payable on death designations for bank accounts, you know, beneficiary designations on retirement accounts. You’re allowed to do that for an LLC interest as well, in Indiana. That’s in the section of the Indiana Code that deals with business associations. I think it’s Title 23. I’ll link it.  

    So one way you could potentially do an LLC administration is by making it transfer on death. That kind of depends on you having an operating agreement. UM, you know, some people like to have, like actual membership certificates to make that transition easier. That’s one option that keeps you away from trust based planning, if for some reason you wanted to do that.  

    Other Considerations: Succession Planning for LLCs

    As I was saying, you know, if it does, if your LLC interest does go through probate, your personal representatives in charge of keeping the business running or winding it up. You’re going to have the same issue if you transfer it on death, or if you put it in a trust, right? So a separate talk needs to be. OK, not only how do we avoid probate, if avoiding probate is what we’re going to do, [but also] how do we do this long? But also, you know, what’s the succession plan for continuing or winding up the business?  

    I think that should be kept for another day. Because that’s a big topic on its own. And that’s a topic that’s more strategy, personal desires and less, you know, legal details.  

    It’s easy enough to give enough power [to your trustee or personal representative] to get it done, it’s just thinking about what you want, how it should go.  

    That’s our overview for today. We’re going to leave it there. We’re at 5 minutes.  

    Conclusion and Key Takeaways

    And just as key takeaways: an LLC interest is an asset. It’s a probate asset if you don’t do anything else. You should look at putting it into a trust or making it payable on death if probate avoidance is part of your plan.  

    And then we’ll talk in future about how succession planning should work in general and you know, maybe a little more on how administration should work in those in those situations.  

    So hope you enjoyed that. It was just a brief overview. If you’ve got more questions, give me a call my phone number and website are right here at the end of the video and I look forward to hearing from you. Have a good one

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  • In the News: WSJ Covers Transfer on Death Deeds

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    Good morning, folks. It’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law and we are back with another talk about estate planning topics. Today’s kind of a fun one and it has to do with yesterday’s newspaper. So the Wall Street Journal has an article about transfer on death deeds. I’ve got it right here. “When Leaving Homes to Heirs Backfires.”

    When Passing Along Your House After Death Gets Complicated – WSJ

    And it’s all about transfer on death deeds, which not every state has. Indiana does. Obviously. I’ve talked about them before.  

    And the article goes through, you know, the basic idea which I’ve explained: automatic out of probate transfer of a house or, you know, any property, actually–real property. And you know that, like I’ve said, the mechanism is simple. As part of an overall plan, it’s great.  

    But there are lots of things that can go wrong. They’re slippery.  

    Examples: Restrictions, Insurance

    So a couple of the examples in the article are things I’ve warned about, so one of them is a transfer restriction in a contract. If you’ve got a property and for some reason your title to it is encumbered by a contract or whatever. And there’s an anti transfer provision and you try to use the transfer on death deed that might violate that.  

    Another example is continued insurance coverage. They use a case in Minnesota where an heir lost the house because the insurer, you know, didn’t give him continuing coverage. Indiana’s got a law in place to prevent that. You’re allowed, you know, a grace period basically to figure out how to insure new property that comes to you that way.  

    Lesson: Tread Carefully with TOD Deeds

    But it’s interesting to see, you know, and it’s the Wall Street Journal. It’s a national paper, really, talking about estate planning. It was fun to see an outside perspective and see how it’s presented to a wider audience. And it lines up with with my advice, which is: great tool, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.  

    So if you want a transfer on death deed as part of your plan, come talk to me. I like to do complete plans, but sometimes I’ll prepare a deed sort of as a one-off.  

    Anyway, hope you’ve enjoyed that. I’ll try to link to the article and see if there’s an online version linked to that in the text description. But hope that was a fun one. See you next time. Bye. 

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  • Does a House Need to Go Through Probate?

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    Good morning, folks. We’re back. It’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law and we are talking about basic estate planning. And probate. Today we’re talking about a very common scenario which is inheriting a house.  

    Does a House Need to Go Through Probate?

    So I was asked the other day, “Ohh, well, my parents’ house is coming to me in the will. But I’m not ready to open a probate estate yet. Can I sell the house right now?”  

    And the answer is no, you can’t. Not if there wasn’t planning done in advance.  

    Probate Avoidance Planning for a House

    So if you plan in advance, you can put a house in a trust so that it passes automatically outside of probate, or you can record a transfer on death deed. Which is another way to transfer house outside of probate: transfer on death deed, which I’ve talked about elsewhere. It’s like a beneficiary designation on a retirement account. It just works.  

    So that and the trust are kind of two main planning techniques.  

    Indiana Probate Procedure for Houses

    But of course once the the homeowner has has passed, well, it’s too late to do any advance planning. So now you’re dealing with… You’re dealing with a house that needs to pass the title in an orderly way, and that’s what probate is, and that’s what probate’s for. 

    Now, Indiana has a small estate procedure that is much simplified. But the limit for that is $100,000 at the moment. It was lower before. So if there’s any significant equity in the house, you can’t use the affidavit procedure to transfer a house title.

    [EDIT: For completeness’ sake, I should have mentioned that Indiana does allow a “devolution affidavit,” which can provide evidence of a transferred house title, even above the small-estate limit and even without probate. The use of devolution affidavits is controversial, and is beyond the scope of this introductory talk.]

    You probably don’t want to anyway, because you might have problems down the road selling the house, clearing a title check at sale, getting a mortgage against it if you want one.  

    So really what you need to do is open a probate estate: that can be unsupervised, maybe, you know depending on how many beneficiaries there are, or the status of the rest of the estate, whether there is a will that provides for unsupervised administration….  

    But the minimum cost you’re looking at there is probably, uh, $3000 and up for a probate administration, and that’s what you have to do before you can… Before you can sell the house. Right? you have to get title to the house before you can sell it.  

    So you can’t just… You can’t just take the house. Say, oh, well, it’s going to be mine and then sell it right away. So that’s a real speed bump for a lot of people. And something you should plan ahead for.  

    You know, if you want your heirs and beneficiaries to be able to get rid of the house right away. Or sell the house. If you want to make it easy on them, you need to do some advance planning.  

    If you want to make it easy on them, you need to do some advance planning

    And on the flip side, if you are probably inheriting a house. You know you need to, you need to be prepared to go through probate, which is going to be an expense. And it’s going to be a delay. So it’s probably going to be a few months before you’re ready to actually sell that house. So that’s just kind of how it works.  

    It can get more complicated once you’re in probate, if you know that if there’s a contest, if for some reason it’s a supervised administration. And if it’s a supervised administration, you need to go to the court and ask permission to sell it and and, you know, get permission to say, OK, we think this is a fair market value sale, whatever. UM. So it can be really tedious a 

    Benefits of Estate Planning for Probate Avoidance

    And that’s why a lot of my estate plans when people come to me ahead of time, we were able to plan around that and make sure we’re not dealing with probate. That’s why probate avoidance is is worth the upfront cost: because it saves you, after death, you know, time cost, legal fee cost, risk of conflict or contest amongst beneficiaries and heirs.  

    Planning looks expensive up front, but it avoids problems later.  

    If you didn’t do the planning and you’ve got if you’ve got a house that you need to do something with? Yep, a probate administration is going to be the way. You know. I’m happy to handle that for people, too, it’s just kind of two different roads and you got to decide which one you want to be on. 

    So. I hope that clarifies the probate transfer of houses. If you want to talk about that topic or any other estate planning probate topic with me. You can book online here at the website or give me a call.  

    Thanks for watching! Bye.

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  • Video: Estate Planning after Divorce

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    Hi folks, it’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law. I’m back today talking about estate planning. Today’s topic is estate planning and divorce. Divorce is a big moment in estate planning because it really changes the legal priority of your relationships, right? Your spouse was number one person in the eyes of the law — your ex-spouse or soon to be ex-spouse, you know, you’re changing those relationships. So during a divorce, immediately after a divorce, you need to revise your estate plan to account for those changes.  

    So the default rules try to handle it, right? because they know you don’t want your ex-spouse being the same person in your plan, in your property disposition, as they were before.  

    But it’s not complete, right? There are some things that happen, like, accidentally that you really need to pay attention to. 

    So. Your ex-spouse, upon divorce, your will provisions in favor of your former spouse are cancelled. I.C. 29-5-1-8. Same thing with revocable trusts, canceled. But not with irrevocable trusts! I.C. 30-4-2-15. And not with life insurance designations or retirement account beneficiary designations. But then transfer on death property deeds, yes, the law does automatically cancel those. I.C. 32-17-14.

    You know if you had an estate plan where your spouse was everything. It’s going to go to pieces after your divorce because some of them will automatically be cancelled, but some of them won’t be. So you should revise that. And make sure, you know, it’s all undone. Everything, everything you want undone is undone.  

    So I’ll try to put those citations you know in the. In the text version of this. But it’s oddball, so you know, you can’t just assume that “Oh, we’re divorced now . . . my ex-spouse doesn’t get any.”  

    The other big point to keep in mind is that the law, the default change in the law, only happens on the date of the dissolution decree or annulment. So while your divorce is pending, you know, you probably don’t want your soon to be ex-spouse, you know, to be in the same position. But the law hasn’t caught up to your family situation yet, so especially if your divorce is going to take a while or you’re worried about, you know, things happening in the interim, you know, revise it in advance. OK.  

    And lastly, even where the law automatically takes care of straightening things out, it’s still good form to, like, go back, restate your will, restate your trust. And take it out. You know, update it. Take out the references to your former spouse as a beneficiary. Note that the marriage existed, but ended in divorce.  

    Is it legally necessary? No, maybe not, but it’s protective of you. It reduces the risk of a conflict later and conflicts are expensive. So you should be revising everything anyway.  

    And lastly, you know, you probably want to rethink your entire scheme of disposition after your divorce, because now instead of being married and jointly responsible for any children or jointly responsible for your parents, your relatives, whatever, it becomes kind of “just you,” in a sense. So maybe it’s time to set up a trust for your children, because you can’t assume that your property is going to your now ex-spouse. So, you know, you might need to use documents in a different way… to sort of stand in for what you used to rely on this other person for.  

    So if you’re getting a divorce, you should think about your estate plan. You should get one if you don’t have one. You should make the revisions. To make sure it works like you want. So that’s quick overview. Your situation is almost certain to be special and different, so that’s why we have initial planning meetings. You can book online. You can call me, and I’d be happy to talk about what you specifically need 

    That’s all for today. Thank you very much and hope to talk to you soon. 

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  • Talking About . . . Coordinating Beneficiary Designations

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    Hi. It’s Andy Stautz with Stautz Law and we are back for another quick informational chat about basic estate planning topics. Today we’re talking about beneficiary designations and specifically coordinating your beneficiary designations.  

    So if you’ve seen my previous videos or read elsewhere, you know that one really simple, easy type of planning technique is just to name a beneficiary on a retirement account; a life insurance policy; or I include transfer on death deeds because they’re basically a beneficiary designation. And what these mechanisms do is pass the property involved (the account, the policy, the real estate) automatically outside of probate. To [whomever] you named as the beneficiary on the instrument or on the account. The nice thing is it’s outside of probate. And for many cases, you know, if you’ve got an account at Vanguard or Morgan Stanley or Schwab, you can do it yourself. [You] don’t even need an estate planning attorney to get it set up for you.  

    The danger is that you do something accidental. So one common scenario is someone has a retirement account and they put. . . . one of their children as the beneficiary on the retirement account and they put another child as a beneficiary of a transfer on death deed. And they say, great, my planning’s done. And perhaps the retirement account is worth $100,000 and the House is worth $100,000. And they think they’ve split up their estate. And they’re good to go.  

    Well, what happens when 20 years later? You know, they have a long, healthy life. The assets in the retirement account keep going up. The House appreciates and you know at time of death it comes time to distribute the assets and all of a sudden one kid gets a half million dollar retirement account and the other one gets the same house worth whatever it was worth all along. Or the other way around. 

    You can end up with unfair distributions that go against your initial wishes if you don’t coordinate your designations with your whole estate plan.

    You can end up with unfair distributions that go against your initial wishes if you don’t coordinate your designations with your whole estate plan.

    So one way to get around that is just revise them often. But that’s pretty, that’s pretty, pretty low tech. And it requires you to stay up to date on these things, and most people don’t want to do that. Most people want to have one good conversation with their estate planner. Get their plan done and check it off right. Yep, done. And there’s a lot to that.  

    So there are there are different ways to handle coordinating beneficiary designations. One easy one is to designate a trust. (If that’s allowed by your bank or retirement account) That way you can write more specific instructions into the trust instrument or. Sort of put everything into one pot and distribute from there, rather than hoping that all the different accounts end up equal or close to equal. And then there are more sophisticated ways, too.  

    Or if charitable interests are part of your plan, that can be a great way to do it. But in any case, the thing to remember about this discussion is beneficiary designations are simple. They’re great. But you need to have a plan for how they’re going to work together and make sure that your estate plan . . . works like it ought to, even if your circumstances change over time. 

    So. 

    If you need help with your situation, you should call me or book an appointment online, on here on the website. But again, Andy Stautz for Stautz Law. Thanks for watching and I hope we’ll be in touch soon.

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  • More on Indiana Transfer on Death Deeds: Beneficiary Designations

    Introduction

    We’re back with a deep dive into one narrow issue concerning Indiana’s transfer on death deeds.

    Basically, a transfer on death deed is a deed that lets you name a person (“designate” a “beneficiary”) who will then automatically receive the property when you die. For a quick overview, you can watch the video (or read along with the transcript) in my previous post talking about transfer on death deeds.

    Today we’re dealing with a specific sub-question: What happens when a designated beneficiary dies before the grantor (in other words, before the TOD deed is triggered)?

    What Happens When the TOD Beneficiary Dies First?

    Indiana’s transfer on death property act is at IC 32-17-14.

    Subsection -20 gives the default rule: the transfer won’t happen if the designated beneficiary is not alive to receive it. So Alice records a deed to her house “TOD to Bob,” her friend, and Bob dies before Alice, then, on Alice’s death, the TOD doesn’t work: the person the house was supposed to go to isn’t there to receive it. The TOD is then ignored and the house becomes part of Alice’s probate estate, just as though it had never existed.

    But wait! That’s not a good result for everybody. What if Alice wanted the house to go to Bob’s kids even after Bob died? Or what if Alice has a daughter Carol and two grandkids, Carol’s daughters, and she wants the house to stay with them?

    The law gives us special rules to get around the default. The special rules are in subsection -22. And they make sense: Subsection -22 says that if your TOD deed gives your property to your “lineal descendant” (like a son, daughter, or grandchild), then the property will stay in that line of descent even if the original beneficiary dies before you. So if Alice deeds her house TOD to Carol, her daughter, and Alice outlives Carol, then at Alice’s death the house will go to Carol’s daughters (Alice’s grandkids). Lawyers call that “lineal descent per stirpes.” It’s probably the right result for most people: if you’re trying to give your property to a child or to your children, you probably want the property to go to your grandchildren if your child isn’t there to receive it. The TOD statute does you a favor, really: it assumes what you intended to do so that your TOD deed still works even if you forget to update it to account for changes in your beneficiaries. (You can override that assumption by specifying in the deed itself “no lineal descendants per stirpes.”)

    The TOD statute does you a favor, really: it assumes what you intended to do so that your TOD deed still works even if you forget to update it to account for changes in your beneficiaries.

    If you’re trying to pass property to people other than your own children or grandchildren, the TOD statute assumes differently. You don’t get the “or his descendants” assumption when your deed is TOD to someone else. So, returning to Alice and Bob: Bob is just a friend; he’s not a lineal descendant of Alice. If Bob dies before Alice, Alice’s TOD deed won’t pass the house to Bob’s kids. The house will revert to Alice’s probate estate (which probably means it goes to Carol, Alice’s daughter). Alice can overcome that assumption (or lack of assumption) if she wants, but she has to write it into the deed itself. She can make a TOD deed to “Bob and lineal descendants per stirpes” to make sure the house goes to Bob’s kids if Bob dies first.

    Conclusion

    In summary, a TOD deed can still work if a beneficiary dies before the TOD takes effect. A deed with no provisions for descent will assume “lineal descent per stirpes” for children or grandchildren, but no lineal descent for other beneficiaries. Those default assumptions can be overridden by specifying “no lineal descent” or “lineal descent” as the case may be.

    Of course, relying on default rules can be risky. The best approach, to be sure your wishes are carried out, is to review your estate plan, including TOD deeds, from time to time (especially after major life events like births, deaths, marriages, and divorces) and to update your documents when necessary.

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