I'm currently successor trustee of 95 y/o grandmother's (California) revocable living trust and executor of her will. She now lives in Broomfield, CO. All accounts have been designated POD to various family members, but one, which is designated to the trust. She would like to disinherit a step-family member who is only named in the trust. The value of the one account is enough to satisfy the terms of the trust, and the step-family member would receive nothing or a nominal amount, as it stands. Given it's a CA trust and POD accounts, Is it worth the expense of re-writing a will and revoking the trust, to disinherit this one person, or should it be left standing? Regards.
Respectfully, you are going to need to spend some dough and speak with an attorney that deals with such matters in California. Ideally, you would like someone licensed in both states, but I am guessing the documents at issue will include choice of forum language that will dictate with state's law control situations.
Probate matters are always case specific and a message board is not a great place to get guidance in such situations.
Best of luck to you.
A will and a trust are valid in CO so Long as validly executed in another state. An attorney would have to see the docs to be certain of the distribution and the validity of the docs.
Doug
You could just amend the trust to disinherit the person. It is not complicated to do so long as she has capacity to sign the amendment. There is no need to revoke the trust - you are just amending the beneficiaries. I hope this helps.
Amending (changing) a trust (even from CA to CO) is fairly simple (I just did it for myself).
With the changes from CA to CO, you can also handle the beneficiary changes and any other updates that need to happen.
