Estate planning for unmarried individuals in California

If you’re not married, you may think that you don’t need an estate plan. Not true! Generally, you need to get yourself an estate plan once you buy a house or have a child – or both! When you own real estate, your estate will (particularly in California) go above the $150,000 exemption for probate. This means that, once you own property in California, your estate will go through probate. Probate is what you want to avoid like it’s a disease: it will take 18-24 months to settle your estate and also take about 10% of your gross estate in fees – and that fee is not taking any indebtedness into consideration. And that’s just to start.

So once you buy a house, you need an estate plan. In addition, once you have a child, you need to have an estate plan because you will need to decide who is going to take care of your child should you be unable to. This can only be done in your will. In addition, if you don’t have handy who is responsible for your child if you become injured or incapacitated, then the police could TAKE your children if something happens to you. Just think: you’re out to a nice dinner, the babysitter’s with little Suzy, and you get into an accident on the way home. The police won’t be leaving little Suzy with the 17 year-old babysitter, and if you don’t have clearly posted who is to be responsible for Suzy, then the police could TAKE your child. You don’t want that to happen.

Both of these circumstances – buying a house and having a child – necessitate an estate plan, regardless of whether you are married or not. In fact, it becomes more important to have an estate plan when you’re single because you don’t have the potential benefit of joint tenancy.

What are you waiting for?

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