For my tribute to Melody, click here.

Some things everybody needs to know about estate law

I'm not a lawyer, and you should consult one for definitive answers to the issues I'm about to raise. But I do have some experience administering estates and am now administering Melody's, and I've been studying personal finance for a long time in connection with RIKI.

If you are an heir — that is, if you stand to inherit something — here are some big things you need to know.

• Someone must go to probate court and file the will or a declaration that there was none. This is not a step you can skip. You can't just gather around and say "Y'all know Mama wanted me to have this" and divide up the property. If nothing else, the names on house and car titles need to be legally changed.
• You should pay a lawyer for a brief consultation; I wouldn't try to do without it. If you are good at business, you'll find everything straightforward, but make sure you get good instructions about how to do things in your state. Don't fumble.
• Most joint bank accounts automatically go to the other person. Melody and I had nothing but joint bank accounts, so now they are all mine.
  
  That happened regardless of her will; it happened instantly when she died, even though her will hasn't been probated yet. And her will probably can't change it. Joint accounts are joint property.
  
  That's how we wanted it, but it points up an important fact: it is not a good idea to have a joint account with someone if you don't want them to get everything in it. If you do, there are ways to put restrictions on the account.
• Life insurance pays immediately, to the beneficiary, and is not taxed. Immediately means within about six weeks, but definitely start the process promptly and don't wait for the will to be probated.
• Don't expect heavy taxes unless the estate is very large and you're in a state that taxes estates heavily (Georgia does not). The deceased person's final income tax return has to be filed, of course. In our case, Melody and I can file as Married Filing Jointly for 2026.
• You can't inherit debt. If Grandpa dies bankrupt, the heirs do not have to pay his bills. However, they can't get any of his property until the bills have been satisfied; all his property has to be sold to pay as much of the debt as possible. The heirs may choose to pay bills in order for the estate to keep specific pieces of property. That is optional. Nobody can saddle you with a debt by dying bankrupt.
• You can turn down an inheritance, in which case it goes back into the estate to be sold and divided up among the other heirs. If the inheritance is a vacation timeshare or something else with little value and high maintenance cost, turning it down can be a wise move.

Now if you are the person who is going to leave an inheritance, here are things you need to know:

• Do not have a joint bank account with anyone unless you want them to get the entire contents of it upon your death, regardless of your will. I mentioned this already.
• You need to make a will. It doesn't cost much, and you should make it with a lawyer's advice. You don't want anything to backfire.
• Don't store your will in your safe deposit box. The box can't be opened until after the will is probated.
• A "living will" or advance directive is something else. A will says what happens to your property after you die. A living will says what medical treatment you want during your last days. You can make it by filling out a questionnaire provided by a hospital, with witnesses. Melody and I did, several years ago, and filed it with both hospitals.
• Please do not use your will to tie people down. Admit that when you die, your property will no longer be yours and will probably be sold. Don't try to tie someone to the family farm. (If you have someone who really wants it, leave it to him; that's different.) Courts have been known to overturn will provisions that substantially limit the freedom of the heir.
• Do not leave a part interest to a minor. This can easily backfire...
  
  I won't say where or when, but long ago, a brother and sister inherited undivided half-interests in a farm. Neither of them had ever lived on a farm, nor wanted to. The sister was a minor.
  
  The farm should have been sold immediately, because land prices were unusually high and the inheritors did not want it. But because the sister was a minor, it could not be sold. The brother, meanwhile, was denied a scholarship because of the property he "owned" but could not sell. All they could do was receive a small rental income from it and wait... and wait. Eventually they sold it, over the objections of relatives who wanted it kept in the family, but did not want to buy it. Everyone went away unhappy.
  
  It would have been better for the property to be placed in trust so that neither heir would own it until both were adults. Or for the will to authorize immediate sale.

So that's what I've learned from bitter experience. Things are going very smoothly with Melody's estate, and the only substantial step is going to be re-titling the house to be solely in my name.

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Sprucing up

To mark Melody's passing and the end of an era, I have changed the color scheme of the Daily Notebook, as I did when I retired from UGA. The new colors are designed to facilitate readability. Web pages as a whole are less colorful today than they were in the early days of the Web, except of course that full-color pictures will be as abundant as ever.

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