With few heirs, is a will still necessary?

Q: My wife and I own three homes, two of which are rental properties. Our estate is worth about $1.5 million and everything is either going to one of us or to our only son upon our demise. Is it necessary to have a will to settle our estate?

A: You need to do some estate planning.

Wills for each of you might be the best approach, or alternatively you might be better off with a revocable trust. It is possible that transfer on death deeds might work for you as well.

You should meet with an estate planning attorney to discuss your options.

Q: My mother, a Texas resident, died in 2020. Her will was probated, and all

of her assets have been sold or distributed, except for her house. We sold it last year, but it was owner-financed by the estate for 10 years with monthly payments at 4.4 percent interest. Payments are made to my mother’s estate. We don’t want to keep the estate open for nine more years. Is there a way to transfer the property into a trust until it is paid off ?

A: No, that is not possible. But you should be able to assign the estate’s interest in the payments to the beneficiaries of the estate, with the agreement of the buyer. In fact, the sale should have been made by the beneficiaries to avoid this problem.

Talk to an attorney, but not the one who advised you to have the estate sell the property.

Q: Can I use a form on the internet to make a will? Can you recommend a website? I cannot afford to pay $600 for both my husband and

me. We are both retired . A: The Texas Supreme Court recently issued a proposed fill-in-the-blank will form you could use. However, the form has not been officially certified as ready, so it’s still too early to use it. You can either wait until Texas finalizes the form, or you could try to find a form on the internet. There is no website I can recommend. Personally, I think the free will forms you find on the internet should not be used.

I have seen countless people write their own wills that way. They usually find terrible forms, and then they complete the forms so poorly that they create more problems than they solve. You are better off hiring an attorney even though it will cost some money.

Don’t forget that if you and your husband both sign wills, you are necessitating a costly probate after each of your deaths. You should therefore ask your attorney to recommend ways to reduce or eliminate the cost of probate.

The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is board-certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Email questions to: stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com.