One of the benefits of serving in the United States Military is that you have access to free legal help for things like: Powers of Attorney, Wills & Living Wills, Family care & Family Estate Plan, Survivor benefits, Estate taxes, Probate.
However, there are some very important limitations to these supports that you should be aware of if you’re still serving and your family, wealth, or assets have grown. Or, if you’ve discharged from military service.
Limitations to Military Wills & Other Legal Benefits
These great military benefits are best for less complicated situations. Consider how you met with your military lawyer and setup your will, trust, or family care plan. How many times did you meet with them? Did they get to know your family’s names? Did they personalize documents for you and make sure they would stand up to scrutiny in different jurisdictions? If you’re like most service members, the answer to one or all of these questions is no.
“Typical” Situations
The typical situation is that service members push through legal en-masse either in preparation for deployment or event. Or they go to legal as yet another step in a check-in or check-out process. The pace that military lawyers are forced to work at times means that customization of family care plans, family estate plans, estate plans, and others is very difficult. Because of this many service members receive basic templates that offer very little customization for their unique family situation. Not all service members have the same situations though, and that’s the issue we’re getting at.
The Most Common Objection
“I already had mine setup while in the military.” This is the most common response we hear when talking about wills, trusts, family estate plans, and similar support with service members and Veterans. We wrote the article, Why you Need to Update your Estate Plan after these Life Events, to show why and how seven common life events change the effectiveness of your current family legal plans.
Whether we’re talking about a plan setup in the military or one created a couple of years ago when your life may have been less complex, if you haven’t updated it, it may not even apply to your life and assets anymore.
Three Things You Can Do Today
- If you put together any of these plans in the past and your life has changed in any of these ways, we want to help. You can find out more about how we help families like yours to establish and update their plans here. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
- You can create a free, fast, and easy family estate plan. If you decide later to create a more in-depth plan we can also help you with that.
- Follow us on Facebook. We share new and important information on family planning all the time.