Many people in Florida know about the importance of creating wills. After all, wills, as a part of estate plans, can help people to protect their assets when they pass away. Unfortunately, many people still procrastinate when it comes to completing the estate planning process, and thus they run the risk of dying without having created wills.
Wills are basically documents where people can declare who their estates’ heirs are. Estate owners also spell out what exactly is in their estates. Furthermore, they name the individuals who will be responsible for managing the process of distributing their estates’ assets.
Those who never created wills prior to their deaths are considered to have died intestate. In other words, they never indicated how they wanted their estates to be governed, including how they wanted their assets to be passed down. In this situation, state laws will effectively make these decisions for these deceased individuals.
The negative part of dying intestate is that the state may end up making decisions about a person’s estate that he or she would not have made for himself or herself. As a result, the individual’s assets may end up in unintended hands. For instance, his or her assets might go to a relative rather than to a certain volunteer organization, as the individual would have wanted. Fortunately, an attorney in Florida can provide estate owners with the guidance they need to complete well-thought-out estate planning that will align with their wishes and meet their heirs’ needs long term.
