Last Will and Testament

If you’ve ever watched a British mystery show, you may have noticed a scene after a character’s death where every person named in a Will sits at a fancy table and a lawyer reads the Will to them. This, in the show, seems to be all that is necessary for estate planning. I’m not British, so I can’t say if this strategy might be effective in Britain, but I can tell you that it absolutely does not work in Oklahoma. With a couple of minor exceptions, for a Will to be effective in Oklahoma, it has to go through a court controlled process called probate. If a Will doesn’t avoid probate, you might wonder why we use it. A Will is effective for choosing who will make certain decisions while assets move through probate; it can also be effective for defining specific gifts to heirs, naming heirs that wouldn’t inherit if you didn’t name them, or adjusting percentages of how much heirs will inherit. One common mistake to avoid: not naming a biological or legally adopted child in your Will is not enough to disinherit that child— in fact, not naming them creates a big door for them to walk through.