I'm going to talk to you about something that no one wants to talk about. You and your husband are going to die some day. Yes, really. Do you have a will and a trust? Yes, I can see your eyes rolling. I can see that guilty look on your face. This is something you HAVE TO DO! Yes, I am yelling at you.

As I said, we have lost four parents and not one of them had a really proper will set up. This cost us THOUSANDS of dollars - real serious actual dollars that we could have used to buy cars, pay for college, or put towards retirement and instead it was just wasted on lawyers, court fees, and other unnecessary expenses.

I think most people have no idea at all about what happens to your property after you die. Let's look at two scenarios:

John and Sally are married and own a house that is in both of their names. They have two kids and no will. John suddenly has a heart attack and dies.

In this scenario, Sally would have no access to any money other than what she can grab out of their checking account or what she might have stashed in her name. She can't sell the house, his vehicle, or any personal belongings of his until it is cleared by the court, which may take months and will require very high cost legal representation.

Our lawyer cost us $21,000 for a simple transfer of property. If you can't come up with that kind of money (and who can these days?), you are going to be stuck with a property that you can't easily sell and will still have to make payments on and maintain.

If the estate is large enough to require probate, the state will automatically take 10-18% right off the top. Chew on that for a minute.

In the meantime, Sally is grieving, trying to figure out how she is going to support her family, dealing with insurance companies, and lawyers, and real estate agents, maybe for the first time ever and she is going to be tearing her hair out and downing tranquilizers just to keep her sanity.

Now here is the second scenario. Same circumstances, but John and Sally had a properly written will and have a simple trust set up with their house and all their major property in it.

The house, vehicles, and all other property passes smoothly and automatically to Sally. All she has to do is show the death certificate to the proper parties and have John's name removed from the assets. She can mortgage them or start selling them the day after the funeral if she so chooses with no questions asked, no lawyers needed, and a minimum of taxes to be paid.

Custody of the children is prearranged with backup plans set in place as needed if both couples were to die or become incapacitated.

Which scenario would you choose? I know which one we would. About a month after my father-in-law passed, we saw what a heck of a mess we were in for with his estate, so we went out and found a good estate lawyer for our own estate.

We didn't have to go far, we found one right at the end of our street. We sat down with him for about 2 hours, answered some questions, made some decisions, and paid him about $1,000, which was without a doubt the best money we've ever spent!

Then in less than a week, we had a will for each of us, a trust, power of attorney forms, guardianship forms and everything needed for every possible combination of catastrophes that could befall our family.

That's more than I usually share in a public blog about my finances, but this is something I feel so strongly about.

As an adult and probably a parent, you have a duty to put your business in order to protect your family - you just have to. You need life insurance, wills, backup custody plans, the whole enchilada.

'Cuz I've been on the receiving end of a situation like this and I'll tell you, it ain't a pretty picture. It is easily the most stressful period of my life to date. I'm not about to put my kids through all that and I hope you won't either.

Be sure and come back next Monday and Friday for the next installment in my Clutterbugs series. To see the rest of the series, just click the Clutterbugs tag at the bottom of this post and it will bring up a list of them.



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