Protect Assets With Estate Planning Including Will

Added June 5, 2007 by Ilyce R. Glink

Print Articles

Summary: When you own a home with a partner who has children from another relationship you may be wondering how to protect your assets. While it's good to buy a home as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, a will can ensure that your property inheritance desires are met. Estate planning, including a will, can protect other assets as well.

Q: Twenty-four years ago, my then boyfriend, who is currently my husband, and I bought a home. We've been married for 17 years and while we've never had any children together, he has two children from a previous marriage.

When we bought the property, I believe we bought it as "joint tenants with rights of survivorship." In case he dies, I'm just wondering if his children can fight for anything that he owns with me. He was only married to his ex-wife for 5 or 6 years. Thank you kindly in advance for any advice you can give.

A: If you own your home as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, and he precedes you in death, you would become owner of his half of the house automatically.

Do you have a will? Does he? I'm guessing that you don't, but not having a will isn't smart. The rest of his assets, like bank accounts, life insurance policies and retirement accounts (unless you're named as the beneficiary), as well as his other belongings (like a car, clothing or furniture) will be divided according to state law -- his children will likely get half and you'll get half.

You and your husband should have a discussion about your assets and get a basic wills prepared so that you don't have to worry about this.

June 5, 2007.

See more articles on this topic by clicking on the "RELATED ARTICLES" above and to the right.

We have over 5000 articles on Real Estate Advice, Personal Finance Advice and Consumer Advice on our site. We encourage you to look at these articles. As always, if you have a comment on our articles, don't forget to post your comment below. We thank you for coming to ThinkGlink.com.

© Ilyce R. Glink. All rights reserved. This content may not be used, distributed, syndicated, compiled or excerpted in any medium or form without written authorization from Think Glink, Inc. For information on syndicating ThinkGlink.com please contact us.

Previous article Next article