Like most people you had the foresight to get a West Palm Beach will validly executed, then what? If you are like most, you put it in a filing cabinet, left a copy with a person of trust and never looked at it again. Well what happens when you have a new kid and forget to edit or revise your will? Is that child going to be disinherited? The answer may surprise you, check out what happens in West Palm Beach when you have a pretermitted child.
What Does Pretermitted Mean?
- Simply put a pretermitted party is one that is left out of your will because they were not in existence at the time you executed the will.
- This often happens with children thus the term pretermitted child.
- It can also easily happen with a spouse, meaning that you can also have a pretermitted spouse.
- In West Palm Beach and Florida in general the pretermitted child doctrines do not apply to grandchildren.
- Want to know why?
- Because a pretermitted child or spouse can end up taking a chunk out of the estate do you know how?
What Happens When You Have a Pretermitted Child or Spouse?
- When there is a pretermitted child or spouse they are entitled to the intestate share they would have received.
- Keep in mind this is going to be taken out of the estate, often leaving other beneficiaries high and dry.
- The rule is the same for spouses and children – but can you get around it?
Can You Avoid These Allocations?
- It is actually easier than you think to avoid pretermitted children and spouses, in fact sometimes you can do it by accident.
- First you can expressly disinherit spouses through prenuptial agreements.
- Second a court is not going to give a pretermitted child their intestate share when you can prove two things.
- You will have to show first that your spouse is taking the majority of the estate and that you have excluded children in existence at the time of the will from inheritance as well in order to give it to your spouse.
- Also you may accidentally avoid the issue.
- Do you know what a codicil is?
- They are basically amendments to wills.
- Lets say you executed your will in 2000 then you got married and had a kid.
- Those are pretermitted heirs.
- Now in 2015 you have your lovely wife and child and you buy a brand new Rolls Royce.
- You then execute a codicil (amendment) to your will to leave that sweet ride to your fraternity brother for years of friendship.
- The court will hold that the date of the new codicil is the valid date, making the mother and child not pretermitted heirs, the logic here is if you wanted them to inherit, that is where you should have to mentioned it.
- Does that make sense?
- Take a look at your will right now.
- Do you have any pretermitted heirs?
- Is it time to revise that old West Palm Beach will?