Frequently Asked Questions
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An Estate Plan has a lasting effect on you and your family. What you do now affects what they may have after you die and who can make decisions for you if you are unable to make your own decisions. Your plan may include one or more of these: Will; Advance Medical Directive (“Living Will”); and Durable Power Of Attorney for Health Care. You must plan carefully and that requires you think about your situation, family, and desires. Do so now while you have the time to reflect.
Please make sure you also review any beneficiary designations on life insurance, retirement plans, annuities and IRAs to make sure they are correct and up to date. Look at them at least every two-three years. If you die with a spouse and child but forgot to change your beneficiary designations that named your parent or former partner – the fact that you married and have a child does not change the distribution of those assets. The asset will go to the person named – the parent or former partner – instead of those you would now name.
A Will is a legal document that states your desires concerning what will happen to your assets after your death. A Will also contains other specific directions from you concerning who is to implement your instructions and, perhaps, who will care for any minor or disabled children you may leave behind. A Will is especially important for parents with young children. You should name a guardian (and preferably a successor) for your children in case the other parent also dies while a child is a minor.
A Will is simply a way for you to express how you want assets distributed upon death, nominate a person to serve as Personal Representative, nominate a guardian for your minor children to serve if the children’s other parent is dead, and state marital status and list the children, if any.
A Trust is a contract between yourself as Trustor and yourself as Trustee. The Trustor is the person that creates the trust; the Trustee manages the trust. The beneficiary of a revocable trust is typically the Trustor during the Trustor’s lifetime. A trust can include more detail about your goals in case you become disabled and how you want your beneficiaries to receive your assets upon your death (in trust, outright, or over a certain term). This is especially important for planning for children with disabilities, for children that cannot handle money and for children that you want protected from creditors and failed marriages. A revocable trust typically becomes irrevocable at the death of the Trustor. There are also irrevocable trusts and other advanced estate planning that can be done.
Many goals can be met using either a trust or Will. You should consult with an estate planning attorney about whether a trust is appropriate for your situation. Signing a Will through this program puts your current goals in writing. If necessary, you can always modify your Will later.
Probate is a court procedure by which a Will is proved to be valid or invalid. The probate process accomplishes the transfer of your assets from your name to your beneficiaries under your Will.
A Will does not avoid probate. With a probate, the Will, if any, is submitted to the Court with paperwork asking for a Personal Representative (PR) to be appointed. Upon appointment, the PR collects the assets; notifies heirs and creditors; pays administrative expenses; pays statutory allowances, if applicable; pays any taxes; pays any creditors in a priority set in Arizona statutes; and distributes the remaining assets, if any, to the beneficiaries.
Probate only includes assets in your own name alone without a beneficiary designation. If there are not enough assets in your probate estate, non-probate assets may be brought back in to pay expenses (see Arizona statutes for details).
A Will does not have to go through the probate process - just a Will where a probate is opened. Probate may not need to be opened if all assets pass by beneficiary designation. A small estate affidavit can be used to collect cars and personal property if the estate is under $50,000. Real estate can be transferred after 6 months by affidavit if real estate equity is under $50,000.
There are expenses to probate that people do not like to pay (attorneys fees, court costs, PR fees) and time – it usually takes one to two years to handle a probate and assets can be tied up for that time period.
You can change your Will or any other estate planning document Wills for Heroes provides at any time. Unless your department is planning another Wills Day, we stongly recommend that you consult with an experienced estate planning attorney before making any changes.
Never write on the legal document once it has been signed. If someone’s address changes or an agent dies, do not cross out the incorrect language. The language was correct at the time of signing. For address changes, place a page with the correct contact information in the same area as your POA and hand it out to your doctor. If an agent has died, place a certified copy of the death certificate next to your POA, so that the successor agent(s) can act when needed.
You should consider changes to your Will or other estate planning documents whenever you have a ‘life event’ – for example, a birth, death, marriage, or divorce in your family or in the family of anyone that you have named or included in your estate planning documents.
We realize how important dispatch and other support personnel are to the everyday operations of first responder organizations; unfortunately, we do not have the resources to cover all of these folks. With approximately 100,000 eligible local, town, city, county, state, tribal and federal first responders (including spouses or partners) across Arizona, those who are most at risk are the priority for our volunteer resources.