Do Both Husband and Wife Need Their Own Wills?

Your Will is a document that allows you to transfer the property that you own on your death to the people or groups that you want.  Since you can only transfer your property, and not your spouses’ property, they need their own Will to give their things to the folks that they want.

Rarely we will see a “joint” Will, which is one Will made for both the husband and the wife. These joint Wills were usually prepared many, many years ago when some attorney’s still used them.

There are many potential problems with having this type of Will. The most obvious is that the Will cannot be changed in any way after the first spouse dies. So if you want to later change a beneficiary, or change or add an Executor, or even do some tax planning, you can’t. You are locked in. If you have a joint Will, and you and your spouse still have capacity to make new ones, you and your spouse really need to make new separate Wills.

If you have any questions about making Wills, or would like a no-cost review to see if your current Wills do what you want them to, please give us a call or email to set up an appointment.