Youtube daily a will Jun 25 2018

What happens when someone passes away and their estate needs administering?

What does Public Trust do?

It's really important when someone dies that we're following their wishes.

So we go to great lengths to locate a will, and make sure that it's the last will.

In one case I handled, we were contacted about an elderly lady who had passed away in her home.

In the absence of any family

we put the word out in the local paper to see if we could locate any relatives

or even friends.

So we had to search really thoroughly to see if we could locate a will,

and to work out what assets and liabilities the lady had left behind.

It turned out that the lady did not have a will,

although, she did have extensive assets and there was no immediate family who'd survived her.

After arranging the funeral, I got the property cleared, cleaned and sold,

and then I worked with a genealogist to identify the people that would inherit from the lady's estate.

So, in this job - no two days are the same.

You get to wear many hats.

This is such a rewarding job getting to help people in their time of need.

For more infomation >> What happens when someone dies without a will? - Duration: 1:20.

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Making a Will in California - The Law Offices of Andy I. Chen - Duration: 8:32.

Hey everybody, it's Andy and welcome again to my office in Modesto, California. I'm

an attorney licensed to practice law in California as well as New York. In this

video I am going to go over how you make a will in California. So, just to be very

clear, when I talk about wills, I'm referring to, you know, basically, the

document that people create when they get to the end of their life, when they

think they're about to pass away, and in the document, or in their will, they talk

about who they want to leave stuff to, how much to leave each person, etc. So

this video is going to go over how you generally create a document like that in

California. This is actually the second, er, sorry the first video rather, the

first video in a series of two that where I go over the validity of wills

generally. This video is going to go over how to create a will in California. The

second video which I'm going to play a little bit of actually right over here.

I'll link it down with the description for you also, but in the second video, I

go over how California law determines whether or not a will is valid or not.

So if you're watching this video, it might be worth it I think to watch this

video as well as this one, like the one that I'll link down below, to get the

full picture of how to create a will in California that, you know, is going to be

correct. So, I think, well, in general, this is true, but I think in particular it's

true for wills. Whenever you write a document like a letter, a contract, an

email or something, it's important to get it right, but the thing is at the end of

the day, you will hopefully be around to clarify whether any sort of,

you know, misunderstanding, to explain things if it weren't clear. A will is

obviously going to be very different because, you know, if you don't make your

will clear, for instance, or you don't comply with what, you know, you're

supposed to do, you know, in order to make a well valid, you will basically not be

able to fix it, you know, because you're obviously deceased. And the kind of

ramifications of that generally will be left to your heirs, your friends ,your

family, your children, etc to deal with. So a will in particular is a document that

you definitely want to get correct because if you don't, then the stuff that

you want to leave to your spouse, your children, etc. possibly might not go to

your spouse or your children. So, a will, you know, basically it's

something that you definitely want to get correct and do as much research as

you can. Hire a lawyer, etc., whatever works for you. So all of

that said then, this video is going to go over two sections of the California

Probate Code and they are going to be section 6110 as well as section 6111.

6110 is going to be the more heavily used section, I think. 6111 is much

shorter. Actually they're both short. 6110 is like that. 6111, I think

is a little bit shorter, but 6111 is not going to be used probably as

frequently I guess in my experience, but you know your experience might be

different. So, anyway, all of that said then, let's go ahead and delve into

section 6110. So 6110 has several criteria that a will has to meet in

order to be recognized as valid in California. Number one is that the will

has to be in writing. 6111 goes over handwritten wills, but,

you know, when I see in writing it could be handwritten, it could be typed, etc., but

basically it cannot be oral. An oral will is called, you know just in case you're

interested, a nuncupative will. California does not

recognize those, but other states do recognize them for whatever reason. So,

but California does not. So anyway, the first kind of criteria is that the will

in question has to be in writing. Number two is that the will has to be signed by

either the testator, the testator's conservator, or by somebody in the

testator's presence at the testator's direction. What does all that mean? So

first things first, the testator is the person who is creating the will. So the

thing is, if you're creating a will for yourself,

you're the testator. If you're helping your mom or your dad or whoever

create a will, they are the testator. So the testator is going to be the

person who is making the will. So the will, you know the writing in

question, has to be signed by the testator themselves, by the testator's

conservator if, you know the testator has been conserved, or by somebody acting

in the testator's presence and at the testator's direction. So what that last

one means basically is imagine somebody who's trying to make a will who is going

to be mentally present, like mentally they're still fine, but due to

perhaps old age or due to other kind of, you know, medical problems, they are not

physically able to pick up a pen and sign their name anymore. So what they

basically do, hopefully if they still can, is to kind of tell somebody Hey, you know

point to them, like, you know, they point to somebody said 'Hey this is my will. I need

you to sign this for me. Do it in front of me, etc.' That's what, you

know, that's what that third criteria basically means. So talking about

wills I guess is a little bit strange because you do have to account for the

fact that, you know that the person who's making the will might not be physically

able to sign their name, you know, in the way that they otherwise would. So a lot

of times, you know, when you're talking about testators, you're talking

about at the direction of a testator, acknowledgement by the testator, etc. So

anyway back to back to the criteria, number one has to be in writing and

number two has to be signed. So number three I actually get a lot of questions

about and it's actually the witness requirement. So California Probate Code

section 6110 says there has to be at least two witnesses to the signing that

also sign their names to the will. And the witnesses actually have very

specific criteria. So number one they actually have to witness either the

testator signing the will themselves or the testator acknowledging to the

witnesses that this is my signature. So again, think back to somebody who is

elderly, you know, incapable of signing their name, but if they can somehow

communicate that 'Hey, you know, this is my signature on this will' that would be

sufficient. So the witnesses have to witness the, you know, witness all this stuff

happening during the testator's life obviously,

if, you know, the testator has to sign or the testator has to acknowledge. The

last part about witnesses is that the witnesses also have to understand that

what they're signing off on is a will and it's not a permission slip for a

child, it's not a pizza delivery order. It is it will and it's significant because,

you know, it's a testator's last will and testament. So that's what 6110

basically goes over. 6111, um, it basically says that if if a will, for

whatever reason, does not meet any of the criteria that I just described, but the

will is handwritten in the testator's own handwriting, that's fine also. That's

actually called a Holographic Will and California will recognize those just

fine. Probate Code section 6112 I'm not

going to go over, but it kind of presents in a nutshell what happens if,

you know, the there's a dispute about the will, what happens if one of the

witnesses falls away because they're declared invalid for some reason. Yeah, so

6112 I'm not going to go over. If you want to, get in touch and I can, you know,

try to help you with 6112 if you like, but 6112 I'm not going to go over in

this video because problems about how to argue and stuff those are very, very

specific. I can't, you know, tell the camera right now how you should

do your own particular situation. So anyway, yeah, I guess hopefully all of

that makes sense. The second video where I cover validity of wills, that's

actually Probate Code section 6113. That one's actually not

terribly complicated. That last criteria, I think, is going to be kind of a mouthful to

describe, but hopefully, you know, I got I got it out, I guess. We'll see. So anyway,

but in terms of how to make a will, Probate Code section 6110 and

California Probate Code section 6111. Yeah so, anyway, I'm going to link both of

those down in the description for you so go ahead and take a look at that and go

ahead and comment, share, like, subscribe, you know, all that kind of social mediay

stuff and I will talk to you guys next time.

Thanks