At the end of almost every estate planning meeting, I am asked “Should I share my estate plan (Will or Trust) with my children, Executor, or Trustee?” We generally recommend that you do not share your estate plan with anyone during your lifetime, especially if that person is a beneficiary. This is because the details of your estate plan are subject to change, and are only relevant to people after you pass. During your lifetime, you may make changes to gifts, distribution amounts or times, adding or removing people. As your estate plan changes there may be multiple documents and even if later one clearly revokes/invalidates an earlier one, seeing the changes between the older document and new document can cause hurt feelings, arguments, and conflict. For these reasons, we do not recommend sharing your plan.
While Trusts help to avoid conflict and arguments because they do not go to probate, even Trust documents have language that limits what a beneficiary is entitled to see and what information they can demand from the Trustee. If you leave differing amounts or have different terms for various people, each one is only entitled to see the terms of their own distribution, not everyone’s. Even if you make equal distributions under the same terms, you may wish to make specific gifts to people or organizations that others may not agree with.
We do recommend that you let your children and/or Executor know where your estate planning documents are so they can access them, but don’t have multiple copies floating around. You should share your Advanced Health Care Directive with your agents, your doctor, and your local hospital.
Even upon your death, the information shared to beneficiaries and heirs may be limited for good reason. If you do not have specific provisions that limit who can see what, the law controls the level of privacy for your estate. A Will is filed in the Probate Court and becomes a public record so there is no privacy in a Will. Any heir (see our blog on Understanding the Important Difference Between an Heir and a Beneficiary) is entitled to a notice of the Petition to Probate and the Will in full. Despite common belief, there is no “reading of the Will” or any meeting in which an attorney reads the Will aloud to the family, but each heir will receive a copy and can read the entire document. A Trust allows for greater privacy and can include language that limits what a beneficiary may see, even after death. A Trust also allows greater privacy for outside members, creditors, etc., as it is not a public document and the terms which allow the Trustee to release information are dictated by the Trust document. A Trust simply allows more control over privacy and defaults to being a more secure document.
Ultimately, whom you share your estate plan with, and how much of it you share, is up to you; however, we recommend caution when sharing and know that those who need to see or understand your estate plan will do so when the time is necessary. At Grissom Law we can help draft your estate plan, guide you on what to do with the documents, and how to share appropriately with family members.
Disclaimer
This Blog/Web Site is made available for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney-client relationship between you and Grissom Law, LLC.