Don't Leave Your Family a Legal Mess to Untangle

1. The right executor. The one person who carries out your wishes, and why picking the wrong one can drag things out for years.
2. A guardian for your children. Who raises your kids if something happens to you, so a judge doesn't have to decide.
3. Clearly named beneficiaries. Exactly who gets what, worded so nobody can argue about what you meant.
4. Specific gifts. The house, the car, Grandma's ring, and how to keep them from turning into a tug of war.
5. The "everything else" clause. The line that catches whatever you forgot to list.
6. Signing it the right way. Witnesses and formalities, so your will actually holds up.
7. Knowing when to update it. Marriage, divorce, a new baby, a new home: the moments an old will stops working.

Nobody plans to leave a mess. But without a will, the decisions you never wrote down get made by someone else.

• State law decides who inherits. Not you, and not always the people you'd have chosen.
• A court can pick your children's guardian. Your family gets a say, but a judge has the final word.
• Your family waits. Accounts can sit frozen while the paperwork crawls through the courts.
• Relatives argue. When nothing is in writing, everyone remembers your wishes a little differently.

The good news? Every one of these headaches is avoidable, and the book shows you how.