VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:Hello everyone, this is Robert Mansour and we're going to take a look at the couples estate planning questionnaire. I'm just gonna walk you through the questionnaire very quickly and hopefully this will help you when you're actually going through it yourself. So you'll notice this is of course for couples. We have other questionnaires for individuals as well as other scenarios. For those, you just have to go up to the Get Started page, click there and you'll find those other questionnaires.
But for a married couple, this is the best one to use. You'll notice that there are six pages, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. In various points in the questionnaire, you will see some general instructions that will be outlined, and so you should try to read those as they might be helpful. On the first page here, you're going to indicate the date of your consultation as well as how you learned about my office. If anybody referred you, spouse number one and spouse number two should enter their names as they wish them to appear. So, spouse number one, you just pick one of you to be the spouse number one, and one of you to be spouse. Best phone number to reach you, best email address. Now this is important so that we can reach you, but also you will receive a copy of all the information you enter and we will also receive a copy, but the copy will be sent to the email address that you provide here. You should also provide your mailing address as well - Best mailing address. And then you click on the bottom here, this button that says "next", and it'll take you to the next page. Now, I also want to show you that you can save your progress if you wish by clicking this button that says "Save" at the bottom right. If you click on that button, it will create a unique link that you can email to yourself. So you can enter your email right here. Then click on the button that says "send" and you will receive this link you can click on it and it'll take you right back to where you left off in the form so that you can continue at a later time. Now, truth be told, very few clients do that because the form doesn't take too long to go through, maybe about 20 minutes or so. So let's go to the next page. Here, it asks if either of you have been divorced or both of you, if you have any prior documents you can indicate so here, maybe one of you does or you both don't. It's totally fine, just whatever fits there. And then the next page we start asking you about who your beneficiaries are going to be, where are the assets of your trust going to go after you both pass away, or perhaps some assets will be distributed when one of you passes away. And then additional distributions after the second person passes away. It asks here if you have any children from previous relationships. So do you have any children from your present relationship, if you click on "Yes", for example, it will open a dialogue where you can enter that information. Also, many times you will find that I have provided you with a sample response so that you can see what the response should look like. If you click "No", then of course that dialogue box will close. If you have children from your present relationship, you can indicate those kids here and indicate their birthdays. And if you need to add a child, you can just click here and it will continue to allow you to add as many children as you need. Here you can talk about how you want your estate to distribute to your children or your beneficiaries, and if you want them to inherit from you right away or perhaps in another manner - any special issues that any of your beneficiaries have, such as bankruptcy or alcoholism or substance abuse or special needs that need to be accounted for - you can enter those here. The "Apocalypse" paragraph is right here. In the rare event all your beneficiaries should predecease you, where would you want your estate to go? And again, there's just a simple example right there for you. Finally, here on this page, you'll notice that, we ask you how much leeway does the surviving spouse have after the first spouse dies to make changes to the trust. That's a very important issue, especially if there's a blended family. Let's go to the next page here - page four. Here's where you indicate all the trustees, either the people who would be managing your trust and distributing your assets. You can put the first person and you can also click Add Trustee to add additional people. Usually I like folks to come up with two or three names. The executors are the people in charge of your wills and your will serves as a backup to your trust. It's also where you might nominate guardians for your children. In addition to separate guardianship nominations, if you have any minor children, you can indicate that here. And we'll deal with guardianship nominations as a result. Healthcare directives for each spouse...People to make healthcare decisions for you if you cannot - typically the spouse is first in line for the other. And then you can name a second and third person. Beyond that, here's where you indicate any healthcare instructions that you might want to leave and any additional instructions. Power of attorney is where you'd list somebody to act on your behalf if you cannot act on your own behalf. And that's where you'd indicate that here. And once again, the spouse is first in line, typically followed by one or two additional people. And then on the final page, here is where we ask you to list information about all of your assets. And when you indicate "Yes" it will open a dialogue box where you can add specifics regarding that particular asset. So this one obviously asks about real estate, including your primary residence. If you want to add property, you can click here. And the same goes for bank accounts and things like that. At the very bottom of this page, we ask you to provide any additional information that you know about - your goals and the reasons that you're creating your estate plan, any other information that you'd like us to have. You can also upload documents by clicking on upload or just dragging the documents to this field, and they will be uploaded with your responses. When all is said and done, you just click on "Submit" and your answers will be submitted to our office, and you will also get a copy of all your responses to the email that you provided at the very beginning. There will also be a confirmation page once you click on submit and you can print that page as well. I hope this was helpful for you. This is the couples estate planning questionnaire. Thank you for the opportunity to assist you, and we look forward to seeing you soon. Comments are closed.
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By Attorney Robert MansourRobert Mansour is an attorney who has been practicing law in California since 1993. Click here to learn more about Robert Mansour. |