Estate Planning for Singles

By Jenny Ling, Esq.

Many people are marrying and having children later in life and so consequently spending more of their life single.  Being single, whether because you haven’t gotten married yet, choose to be single, or have been widowed or divorced, doesn’t mean you should wait to create your estate plan.

By having an estate plan, you not only make the decisions about who receives your assets upon your death, but you also put yourself in the driver’s seat as to who will make important legal and financial decisions for you should you become incapacitated. By creating a financial power of attorney and power of attorney for health care decisions, you can ensure that only those you would choose will be making these important decisions for you. Without powers of attorneys, your loved ones may have to go through a guardianship proceeding to be able to assist you. A Health Care Directive provides specific directives to your loved ones about the course of treatment healthcare providers and caregivers are to follow when you are diagnosed as terminally ill or permanently unconscious.  A Health Care Directive is used only if you have become unable to give informed consent or refusal due to incapacity.

If you die without a plan in place, your estate will go through a process known as probate and the court will distribute your assets based on the laws of “intestate succession.”  Your assets will go to your children if you have any, then to your parents if they are living, and so on to living blood relatives.  The law does not allow any of your assets to be distributed to non-family members, like friends or charities. Some people, as part of their estate plan, plan to avoid probate all together.

By creating an estate plan, you can determine how your loved ones receive assets from you when you die.  The “how” is especially important if the beneficiaries are minor children – either your own, or nieces and nephews, or your best friend’s children – or if a beneficiary has special needs and receives government assistance.  Minor children can’t hold assets in their own name, and once they turn 18 they would have unsupervised access to any assets left to them, and we all have heard stories of how young beneficiaries have received assets too early and made poor decisions as a result.

Everyone, no matter what stage of life they are at, should have an estate plan in place.  It is important to let your family, both birth family as well as chosen family, know what your wishes are. No matter what stage of life you are in, it’s essential to have a plan in place.  If you don’t have a plan already or if you aren’t sure if your plan will work for you, Contact Us.  We’d love to help you make sure there is no question what your wishes are.

Jenny Ling is a partner at the Law Offices of Jenny Ling, PLLC.  She focuses her practices on estate planning, business succession planning, business and bankruptcy.