If you die in New York without a will or a trust to distribute your assets, the State will step forward with its own plan for intestate distribution.  For instance, if at the time of your death you were married with children, your spouse will get the first $50,000 of your estate and the remainder will be split 50% to your spouse and 50% to your children.  The State is not going to care that your spouse may have needed the children’s share to take care of the family.  A hardship may result from the way the State distributes your assets.  The State is not going to care that a nineteen or twenty year old child may not have the maturity not to squander the 50% of the estate assets that he or she inherited.  The state is certainly not going to do any tax planning for you to minimize the approximate 16% NYS estate tax on estates having a value of more than $1,000,000.  The statutory plan does not create marital trusts. 

In January 2012 Ronald Blum died without a will.  He was a holocaust survivor and had no living relatives.  He did have people and causes that he cared about.  He had an estate valued at $40,000,000.  Because there was no will and there were no living relatives his estate escheats to the State.  Ronald Blum died with the official NYS estate plan, the plan that left his $40,000,000 to the State.  Two weeks before he passed away he finally agreed with his attorney that he needed a will.  He never got it done, a serious lesson to others not to procrastinate.

If you don’t have a will or an estate plan, set a deadline for yourself to get one.  At the very least you should know how NYS would distribute your assets if you have no estate plan in effect.  Procrastination on creating an estate plan may lead to disaster 

Post a Reply