Beneficiary Guide for Everyone

Learn how to protect your rights, avoid delay or fraud, and ensure what is yours ends up in the right place.

The primary reason people take the time to write a will or create a trust is not for their own sake. It is to be sure that the legal process for their beneficiaries is simple, quick, and fair, reflecting not just their wishes but also being mindful of the expectations and needs of those left behind.

Beneficiary Guide for Everyone is a step-by-step guide on how to make and execute these decisions from both sides of the process. Section one covers the perspective of the planner: choosing how to leave your assets to your chosen beneficiaries, simplifying complicated legal options, definitions, and concepts. Section two covers how beneficiaries should approach the process so that assets are distributed with minimum delays or complications.

Throughout the book, author and lawyer Ronald Farrington Sharpuses an "Ask the Lawyer" format to describe some common and even unusual questions friends and clients have posed to him. He answers the practical as well as legal aspects of the questions asked with thoughtful solutions.