Married Couples Estate Planning Attorney
Serving Cook County & Lake County, Illinois

Celebrate Your Wedding Vows by Revisiting Your Estate Plan

With each marriage come new rights and new responsibilities. If you already have an estate plan created when you were single, then you must bring your estate plan up-to-code to reflect your wedding vows.

Unfortunately, many married couples mistakenly believe that they can make personal, health care and financial decisions for one another should either spouse become legally incapacitated due to a serious injury or illness. Nothing could be further from reality!

Without proper estate planning for married couples in advance to appoint your spouse as the incapacity decision-maker, he or she will not have legal authority to make even fundamental decisions for you (or affecting both of you). For example, medical privacy laws will bar access to your medical records and the ability to consult with your attending physician, financial laws limit control over your finances, and IRS regulations will prohibit filing a “legal” joint income tax return … for starters.

Unless you legally appoint the decision-maker of your own selection in advance through proper estate planning, then a probate judge will select one for you. While the judge will likely appoint your spouse, the probate court process to accomplish this is expensive (it employs at least three attorneys), discloses your private personal and financial information to the public record and is a real hassle for your spouse. Read more about How to Decide Who Your Healthcare Proxy Should Be.

Did you know that in the absence of proper estate planning for married couples, your assets may be distributed after death based on “one-size-fits-all” state laws written for people who do not have their own estate plan? Of course, this impersonal estate plan written by state lawmakers may not reflect your own unique circumstances and objectives for your spouse and assets. In fact, depending on how you titled your premarital assets and how your beneficiary designations are arranged, you may disinherit your own spouse and force your spouse to sue your estate!

Fortunately, our lawyers can help you avoid probate and replace that impersonal, state-written, one-size-fits-all estate plan with one we design together for your unique circumstances and objectives. Our legal team can even help you coordinate the beneficiary designations on your life insurance and retirement plans with your estate plan for married couples to avoid unpleasant, unintended consequences.