Waxhaw Will Lawyers

What Is a Will?

A will is a legal document determining how your estate is distributed should you become medically incapacitated or pass away. While most people know that wills can be used to distribute assets to loved ones post-death, they can also serve various other purposes, including:

• Establishing Health Care Power of Attorney (POA). Health Care POA allows you to make provisions for what kind of care you should receive (and who is in charge of your care and estate) if you become medically incapacitated.
• Establishing Financial POA. Financial POA enables you to stipulate how to handle your finances if you become incapacitated.
• Establishing guardianship. If you have a child (or children), you can appoint a guardian in your will to care for them if something happens to you and your co-parent cannot step in.

Everyone should have a will. To cover all your bases, you'll want two wills: A living will (called an "Advance Health Care Directive" in North Carolina), and a last will and testament. The living will take effect if you're incapacitated, whereas the last will and testament goes into effect once you pass away.

Before we go any further, it may be helpful to understand common terms you'll come across as you write your will:

• Decedent. A decedent is a person who has died.
• Beneficiary. A beneficiary is a person named in a decedent's will or trust to receive certain assets post-death.
• Executor/Personal representative. When a person passes away, their estate goes into probate. A court oversees probate to ensure the decedent's estate is correctly distributed, and their last wishes are fulfilled. The executor (also sometimes called a personal representative or PR) is an individual named in the decedent's will or appointed by the court (if the will does not name an executor) to oversee probate and the distributions of the decedent's assets.
• Tangible property. Tangible property covers things that can be touched, such as a house, a vehicle, a family heirloom, etc.
• Intangible property. Intangible property covers things that cannot be touched, such as a bank account, life insurance policy, retirement benefits, etc.
• Assets. Assets are property that an individual owns that have a monetary value. Tangible and intangible property are assets.
• Liabilities. Liabilities are things an individual owes to another person, such as debts.
• Power of Attorney (POA). When a person appoints someone (usually a close friend or family member) to look after their health or finances if they become unable to do so, they grant that person POA. As we mentioned earlier, there are two kinds of POA: financial and health care-related.

These terms will probably come up as you navigate the estate planning process, so knowing what they mean can help you draft your will more confidently.