After Your Documents Are Signed

Will Changes: Your Will can be changed at any time and for any reason, as long as you are legally competent to make the changes. Review your Will periodically in order to assure yourself that it still accomplishes your objectives. You cannot change your Will at home by simply crossing out paragraphs or writing over it. If you do that, it will invalidate your Will. If a change becomes necessary, contact an attorney.

When Changes Are Necessary: Any number of things could happen that would require you to change or rewrite your Will. Several of the more common ones include:

• An unexpected death or disablement;
• A change in your marital status;
• A considerable change in your economic picture;
• A need to change your Personal Representatives or Guardians;
• A change in state or federal law that may affect taxes or the allocation or distribution of your property.

Property Passing Outside of Your Will: Remember that your Will does not determine precisely how certain property might pass at your death, and some Wills do not affect such property at all. Examples of such property might be trust property, a power of appointment, joint property with full rights of survivorship, and certain employee benefits, insurance policies, and accounts with beneficiary or survivor designations you made or that are imposed by law. Accumulation of a large amount of these assets might result in an allocation of property and tax liability among heirs and non-heirs, that you or your attorney did not anticipate when your Will was drafted, and a change might become necessary. Also, if you have made changes as to the beneficiaries in your Will, you might want to consider making similar changes in beneficiary designations on your employee benefit, insurance and account documents.

Handwritten List: Michigan law allows you to refer to a list made separately from your Will that states who will receive certain items of personal property. Your Will includes a reference to such a list which means that you can (but do not need to) prepare such a list. If you do decide to prepare such a list, keep the following in mind:

• The list can dispose of only personal household goods such as items of furniture, jewelry, sporting goods, tools and so forth. You cannot dispose of cash, bank accounts, stock, insurance policies, real estate, titled motor vehicles, or other titled, intangible or non-personal property in your handwritten list.
• The list should be in your own handwriting and should be signed and dated. The last date listed is the one that would be used.
• There is no requirement that the list be witnessed.
• The list should be kept with the original Will unless the original is to be stored in a vault or safe deposit box, or is to be filed with the Probate Court, or it can be kept with an unsigned copy of your Will. You will want it available for occasional changes, but you will also want your Personal Representative to be able to locate both documents quickly, and readily see the relationship between the two documents.

Storing Your Will: Your Will is an important document and should be stored safely. Although the office will keep an unsigned copy of your Will in unsecured storage for a period of two to six years, you receive the only original, and one unsigned copy (unless you requested more) for your Personal Representative or key beneficiaries, for example. You can keep the Will at a safe place at home or you can place it in a safety deposit box. If you safeguard the Will from burglary or fire, you will want to anticipate your Personal Representative's need to locate it later. If you store it in your safety deposit box, your heirs will need to obtain a court order to gain access to the box, if one of them does not already have that right. For a small filing fee, your Will can be deposited for safekeeping with the Probate Court of the county in which you live. Above all, your Personal Representative or other fiduciary needs to know where the signed original is kept and have the means to retrieve it on short notice, even if they have retained their unsigned copy of it.

Revoking Your Will: You may revoke your Will by destroying it or by preparing a new Will. If you destroy your Will without preparing a new Will, the assets normally distributed according to your Will will pass at your death according to a previous will ("reversion") or according to the state laws of "intestate succession". If you decide you no longer want the provisions of your current Will, you should contact an attorney to make an appointment to prepare a new Will.