Practice Areas

Wills

A Will allows you to direct how your assets will be distributed after your death.  If you do not have a Will, or another estate planning instrument in place such as a Trust, then state law will decide:  1. who will have custody of your minor children, and; 2. who will inherit your property/estate assets.

If a person has only a Will, then property and other assets must be "probated" in the county court where the person resided prior to death.  Probate is a slow and expensive process where a lawyer for the estate typically must file multiple documents and attend multiple hearings to prove to the court that all assets are accounted for, all of the decedent’s valid debts have been paid, and that the balance of estate assets are prepared for distribution to the persons designated in the Will.  The cost of probating an estate is typically at least several times the cost of preparing and administering a Living Trust.  Probating an estate often takes well over a year, and can take several years depending on various factors.  Perhaps worst of all, probate is "open to the public," so others can easily discover what your assets are, make claims against those assets, attack the Will, and litigate their claims in open court.  As much as we don’t recommend that a person or couple have only a Will without a Trust, it is almost always better to have a Will than to die without one in Nevada.

What happens if I die without a Will in Nevada?

If this happens, your estate property will be distributed to certain predetermined "heirs" under Nevada's law of “intestacy.”  Dying “intestate”, meaning without a Will, means your entire estate must be "probated" by the court in Reno.  The LAW determines who your heirs are and who will inherit - and those legally determined heirs are often NOT the person(s) you would choose to receive your estate property.  For example, if you are happily married when you die but you also have living siblings, then your sibling(s) may receive a significant part of your estate despite the fact that you want your spouse to receive everything.  If you have step-children who were never legally adopted, those children would receive nothing, no matter how much you want them to be included in your legacy.  If no legal heirs are found, your property will be given to the State of Nevada.  Dying "intestate" is not desirable.  It is often messy with battles between the legal heirs in Probate Court, all because there was no valid Will.