Upstate Estate Law, P.C. Blog

You need a Last Will for many reasons.  Even if you do not have a Last Will, you have an estate plan. That plan is laid out by New York’s intestacy statute, which provides the order in which your relatives will inherit your estate if you die without a will.  If you are survived by your spouse only, your spouse will inherit your entire estate. If you are survived by your spouse and children, your spouse will inherit the first $50,000.00 of your estate, and the remainder will be split equally between your spouse and children.  This provides the first reason why you should have a Will.Click here to finish this post.

A health care power of attorney designates an agent to make decisions regarding health care when a person cannot make those decisions due to incompetence or unconsciousness.

In South Carolina, only one person can serve as your health care agent at one time. You may designate another person to serve if the first agent can not, but they cannot be designated to act at the same time.

A living will is simply Click here to finish this post.

If you interact with an estate attorney, you may hear the term “heirs.”  You may think you know what this term means, but it actually has a precise legal definition.   In South Carolina, the term heirs is defined in South Carolina Code of Laws 62-1-201(17). The statutory definition is “those persons, including the surviving spouse, who are entitled under the statute of intestate succession to the property of a decedent.”  The statute of intestate succession is found in South Carolina Code of Laws 62-2-102 and 62-2-103. Intestate succession is where you turn to determine the persons entitled to inherit from a Decedent when there is no Last Will and Testament.

The South Carolina intestacy statute sets forth the heirs as follows: Click here to finish this post.

If you have a Last Will prepared, you will probably wonder what per stirpes means. The term is from Latin and means literally per branch. What it means is that each branch of a Decedent’s family takes an equal share, regardless of the number of family members in each branch. This term simply tells us attorneys how to divide up an interest in your estate in case the person you named as a beneficiary died before you, leaving surviving children.

The term is best defined by an example. Suppose that Click here to finish this post.

Nope, it’s not a highway.  Intestate (or intestacy) means that a Decedent has died and has not left a Last Will and Testament to be admitted to probate. The South Carolina Code of Laws 62-2-101 states that “[a]ny part of the estate of a decedent not effectively disposed of by his will passes to his heirs as prescribed in the following sections of this Code.  Thus, everybody has an estate plan in place, even if a Last Will has not been executed.

Note – The statute may not reflect how you would want your estate to be distributed. It is best to consult with an attorney to discuss your estate planning, and not leave your estate plan in the hands of legislators in Columbia.

 See this post for more information on intestacy.