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Comment by courtewing | Hacker News Reader

This is great advice all around, but get a local lawyer involved to prepare your will. Even in US, there is not a single set of laws that apply to wills and power of attorney. It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work and ultimately be ending up with a document that has little legal basis.

Do your loved ones a favor - hire a lawyer to do it. It's not free, but they'll do the actual paperwork, and you'll get the comfort of knowing it's done right.

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There are a few grammatical errors in these documents as well that do not inspire confidence.

Also, you better be damn sure that you can trust the person you give power of attorney to -- the document provided here assigns power of attorney immediately, not on incapacitation/death, and allows the person you designate to gift themselves up to $13,000 a year of your own property without your consent.

Considering the laws of the 50 states are sometimes very different, and these documents cover a wide range of legal topics, I think you'd have to be an idiot to use these documents without running them by a lawyer in your state, because they might not have the consequences you think they have.

Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows.

www.uslegalforms.com has been around for a long time now, and they at least have state-specific documents. Use them if you're going to use anything without consulting a lawyer. But really, pay a lawyer, it's worth it.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

Good advice.

I think this got upvoted because it offers a monthly email nudge/reminder and hopefully the site/service will stay on top of future issues related to staying on top of keeping your stuff together.

But yeah, talk to a lawyer to ensure state specific issues are properly covered/handled.

Something I've always wish the Social Security Administration offered was an executor service of sorts.

They're the canonical reference if you're dead or not, so upon my death, I could have configured in their web interface:

* who to notify, along with documents for each person (personal letters, etc)

* who to turn bank accounts over to

* a whole long laundry list of other stuff I have to find someone I trust to do if I do sooner than expected

What organization is typically entrusted to do this sort of task? I don't mind paying for my loved ones to be secure and guided after my death, I just want an org that I can 1) trust and 2) will be around for 100+ years.

You may set your beneficiary for almost all of your bank accounts and financial accounts. You just have to notify them of your beneficiary. EDIT: This may only be for retirement accounts?

I use Simple for banking, which doesn't support this, but Betterment (who manages my retirement accounts) does. My wife is my primary beneficiary, and I've submitted a feature request to them that they support specifying a 501(c)(3) as my contingent beneficiary (Watsi, in case you're wondering) if we've both died at the same time.

I'm curious what their UX around it is; I should ask! Ideally, my wife would provide them proof of my death, and then they would say "Here are your options, and the consequences of each."

The social security administration notifies banks of your death.

I'm curious how they do this. Do they provide a list of SSNs on a schedule to financial orgs through the Fed?

The SSA has a death index. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index Banks probably register your SS number (which they are required to have) with the SSA for "notify if dead" (just a guess). Doubtful they give every financial institution the SS numbers of all deaths on a regular basis. Then again they might have direct access to such information since they can't open up an account for a dead person.

Of course it suck if you end up on it while you are still alive

http://consumerist.com/2015/05/04/being-declared-dead-by-the...

>She learned that she was dead when she received a letter from her bank. The bank expressed its corporate condolences, and locked her out of her account. The Social Security Administration also stopped her retirement checks, and her health insurance also stopped.

You trust the government to do that? You're braver than I am. I would expect the government would have a great time knowing about everyone's end of life plans. The IRS would certainly love it. I don't trust the government to wash my car let alone ensure my family is protected if I were to die.

You, presumably as an American citizen, already trust the government to do a whole lot more than "wash your car," so the fear seems a bit unfounded. You implicitly trust them to fund/manage/develop/build: the entire infrastructure your car rides on (and which your safety depends on), the educational system that will likely educate/indoctrinate your children for 12+ years, and the legal system (and all of it's record keeping complexities) which preserves and allows you to uphold your rights and well-being. That's just to name a few that are certainly more complex than the task the GP is envisioning. Maybe you can pose a "free-market alternative" for the second one, but you can't for the other two. (Thankfully.) Plus, if you still prefer having a "real" physical executor there, just put that single person's name down for all of the fields from the SSA.

Adding a few fields to a database is well within the capabilities of pretty much every government agency around. At least until feature bloat and cruft starts to develop...

The legal system was/is constructed by lawyers, for lawyers.

> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows.

My guess is it struck a chord with people similar to myself - young family and minimal EOL planning. (although the snarky domain definitely helps)

For us, the biggest problem has been deciding who should take care of the kids if something happens to both myself and my spouse. The only members of our family that aren't shitty people or very flaky are elderly or have medical issues preventing them from caring for children. (And all of our close friends have kids and full lives of their own.) I would love to hear if anyone has suggestions for determining the least shitty choice in a situation like that.

Do you have any friends with kids of their own? We found in our planning that the people who had kids of similar age to ours were the best choice. They're already dealing with "kid stuff" and, other than finances, adding more kids doesn't totally change the nature of their life.

Make sure to have life insurance, and have your lawyer set it up as a trust for the child's well-being. You can designate someone other than the caretaker of the child to be the trustee of the trust if you want to decentralize responsibility, though in our case we found that unnecessary. In our case, we recognized that additional kids would mean our designees need a bigger house, so we took a very liberal view of what constitutes the children's well-being.

Also keep in mind that you may revise your choices over time. We reasoned that her friend is the best choice for this 5 years, but when our daughter gets a bit older, we can reevaluate and see who in our then-social-circle is the ideal.

I'm in a similar situation. The other members of both sides of our family are all either flaky, dirt poor, or too old to take care of our kids.

And one of our children is autistic and will likely need long-term care when she's an adult. Maybe one of our other children will step up when the time comes, but I can't count on that.

My plan is to live forever.

Dirt poor shouldn't be a problem. Buy life insurance.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, this problem is solved with godparents. I'm not Catholic (and I don't have kids yet), but the model seems to make sense. Forgive me for stepping way beyond the bounds of "internet stranger's business" but if your close friends' lives are so full that they would not care for your children if you became incapacitated, you need better friends.

I strongly disagree with that view. I don't have children of my own and while I would open the door at 3 am to take friends in (or heck a neighbor) while we get things sorted out taking on children is a major life disrupting experience.

So yes saying no would be selfish, assuming that any of your friends would have their lives completely disrupted just because you have children seems quite a bit more selfish.

The point is that throughout history, raising children are considered the point of life, not trophies that are otherwise a distraction from vacations and toys.

Well, no. Traditionally care for those kids goes to the extended family, not the friends. Sneering at friends who won't take in children is not something that you can support in terms of an argument of tradition.

I come from the RC tradition as well, though we didn't baptize our children.

I can think of exactly two sets of people in our diverse set of friends (and they are good friends) whom we might ask for this kind of consideration, but really, even both of them are problematic for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of our friendship.

I don't think it would solve the problem you are responding to, which is that the person doesn't know anyone they feel are capable of taking care of their children. Having a formal title for the role isn't going to help them find someone for the role.

There's no easy answer. You just gotta talk with close friends about it.

Taking care of more children would be difficult for my wife and I but I would strongly consider it if we were approached by one of our friends or family members about it.

Our life with 5 kids is already full but we are stable, love each other and have the resources, both emotional and financial to provide for more.

We would have to change our life and make sacrifices but that's what love is all about.

This doesn't really answer your question, it's more about taking care of someone else's children than finding someone to take care of your own. But if you are thinking about these things the other side is that you need to ask yourself if you could make the sacrifice to take in more kids yourself.

My criteria for choosing who would take care of my children are simple:

1. their family is emotionally capable. 2. the family is willing - including both parents and any children they already have.

We're talking about an already incredibly bad situation. My goal wouldn't be to give my kids everything they would have if they still had their parents. It would be to minimize the risk of more horrible things happening to them - abuse, abject poverty etc.

Agreed. And remember that the family taking on the kids doesn't necessarily need to be able to support them financially. Your will should designate sufficient funds to a trust account (either through your savings if you have enough, and/or through life insurance) to care for your kids through childhood. Plus ideally some extra for the people taking on this huge responsibility. Otherwise everything iamthepieman said.

Find a friend in the same situation as you, and agree to be each other's back-up parents. Get some term-life insurance in a fairly large amount to go in trust to the kids if your spouse dies; that will cover the expenses, and term-life is pretty darn cheap.

I'm in a similar situation and trying to make those same decisions. We ended up picking the ex-wife of a family member. Our immediate family did not fit our criteria and after we talked with her it seems like the best choice.

However, we are still struggling with how to distribute the life insurance in this case. Currently, she would get it all, but I think setting aside x% for education for each kid is worth considering (maybe y% for after college graduation). I realize someone taking in someone else's kids will incur some costs, so I think they should get 'something' - with two more kids, they may need to upgrade their house.

Thoughts on %'s or amounts?

Don't set aside money for education, that will just interfere with financial aid. No parents means no income means free school

+1 for the ring votes theory

Not saying it is not useful or important. It just doesn't fit the subject matter people come here to read.

My parents made wills that nominated close friends as guardians for us kids. The friends nominated my parents as guardians for their kids. There would have been enough value in either house to cover any extra costs of looking after the orphaned set of kids.

The key to cutting through this incredibly difficult question is to remember : at that point, you're out of the picture and whatever hopes and dreams you had for the kids now come a distant second place to finding the best way forward for them in a horrific situation. Your kids are going to be messed up if your gone, no question. At that point the focus should be on 'loving family' first and everything else distant second. If that means another city, state or country,so be it. If that means them living in a family with less money, so be it. If you vote for the purple party and they vote for the yellow part, so be it. Your kids will end up voting yellow but at least they will be loved and supported.

Find a loving family, they are the answer. And make sure the life insurance is sorted out.

> who should take care of the kids if something happens to both myself and my spouse

I would expect this to be a very rare occurrence. Most likely is an accident that kills one of the parents only, but in most scenarios where both parents are together, they would have the children with them. I guess it's always important to plan for risks, even if they are rare, if the consequences are very bad - 'high threat, low probability' is the military term, I believe?

It's at least a checklist and covers stuff you should be thinking about but may not have thought of (even if not financial such as the Thoughts section).

For instance, my wife and I need more videos of us and not just the kid. If something happened to me tomorrow I would love it if my wife could show him videos of me when he gets older.

I agree that maybe the site needs a disclaimer that getting a lawyer is better but for some isn't a generic form better than nothing? Not a lawyer either so not entirely sure about that.

For the videos, you two might want to record some of your stories and values. If you have iPhones, I've built an app that guides you through it -- http://www.oakvideos.com

RE ring votes: There are a suspicious number of one-sentence / add-no-value comments on this all posted about an hour ago.

I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message of OP is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", but "I'm a wake up call, now go and get things done".

> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this -- I'd bet it was ring votes that got it to the front page. Or maybe it was just the snarky domain, who knows.

Or maybe it's because the site is a useful checklist of what we should do to prevent death from completely destroying our family.

I'm the original poster and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way. The core message is not "we offer 100% legalese-proof papers", the pdfs are described as templates. The core message is:

  Get your shit together now and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I thought this is a great starting point. Also, after looking through the actual wills, they are already filled out with George Washington's information so the legal documents are used as an example, not for actual legal use.

Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :)

This site is helpful to let me know which parts I overlooked like simple things like passwords or account access.

> Plus, I'm not sure my family would enjoy looking through my will upon my death with: Get Your Shit Together! printed at the bottom of each page :)

Who cares? I'd make "get your shit together" a condition of inheriting anything from me if it had any legal standing.

I just coughed up my email to get the reminders, because, (employers don't read this:) I'm a lazy procrastinating POS. I'll probably use LegalZoom to get the forms if I ever do get off my ass and get it done.

> Frankly I don't see why the HN crowd would upvote a site like this.

If you view this as an MVP of an open source repository for EOL information then it makes total sense that it got upvoted here. If we can keep our code dry, why can't we keep our lives dry?

HN voting rings are fairly tough to actually get working. I doubt this site used one. Also, a small number of upvotes from varying accounts (in terms of age, location, reputation, etc) can cause a post to hit the front page.

"It varies state by state. With a generic template pulled from the internet, you could just be doing a whole lot of work"

You won't be doing a "whole lot of work", but anyway, what works really well is giving a lawyer professional paperwork from another state (or whatever) and telling him to fix it for your state's laws.

They handle this kind of "translation" all the time because of people who moved in from another state, they might be a bit confused if you moved in from the state of "the internet" but it'll be less confusing than walking in with a completely blank slate. At least they'll have to ask a lot fewer questions and explain a lot fewer things. Spending money to telling a lawyer "i donno" can be very expensive compared to how cheap it is to tell him something like "I want the inheritance to work something similar to Wisconsin law"

Think by analogy of doing desktop support for a guy who can't articulate anything clearer than "the internet is broken on the hard drive", its gonna cost him a lot. But if the guy walked in with professional documentation of his specific problem, its gonna be a lot cheaper.

Exactly! My dad remarried and moved to Georgia. He didn't change the will at all thinking all are set.

When he passed away, I found out that the will is invalidated because that's how it works in Georgia's legal system. Luckily my dad's wife is a nice woman and worked with me to ensure the estate went through probate properly.

But always double check when your life's circumstances change (new residence, etc)

If you have a big estate see a lawyer.

If you don't, or cash strapped now, you can get by with Nolo press. If you can understand ROR, and programming, after reading their two books on wills and trusts, I think you can set up a trust and will, and skip the lawyer.

On the will get two signatures from people not in the will, and it does not need to be notarized in California. If you want to exclude a child out of a estate you must explicitly state that in the will.(Some kids got a lot of cash early on. Explain to them you love them. Make sure they are doing well, if you exclude them.) I recently did a will for a friend. Her daughter took all the family money when her father died--leaving her mother with nothing. The ironic part is her daughter is a multimillionaire in LA, with a successful business. She took advantatage of a bad situation, and a angry dying man. So yes, I didn't feel it was immoral to exclude her from the will of that friend.

Great advice.

Even with a will, in some places the probate process is very expensive and onerous. In many cases, it's a lot easier to use a simple trust mechanism vs. a will. 3 hours of attorney time now can avoid 50 hours + lots of calendar time later.

Did it through RocketLawyer myself, and they have attorneys to review it as well as to guarantee it's legal in the state you live in. I also did my living will through them, all legitimate.

There are plenty of bad lawyers out there, so if you're going to hire one, please do the legwork (get referrals, speak to multiple candidates) to find a good, trusted one.

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