Can Your Spouse Disinherit You? How Marriage Protects the Family
By Lee Carpenter |
It’s the stuff of low-budget movies. The grieving widow, dressed in black with her face veiled, sits in the attorney’s oak-paneled conference room for the reading of the will.
Mystery surrounds the proceedings. Who among the family members present will inherit the patriarch’s vast estate?
The gray-headed attorney breaks the will’s wax seal and begins to read. Dramatic music swells as he utters phrases like “being of sound mind,” “heirs of the body,” and “give, bequeath, and devise.”
The widow’s gaze intensifies as the attorney comes to the words she has been waiting for: “And to my wife of many years, I leave . . . nothing.”
Audible gasps are heard as the widow faints in despair and is carried to a nearby sofa. Had her years of dutiful service meant nothing to the man she loved?
So much fiction. In the real world, there is no reading of the will (the beneficiaries will likely receive a copy by email). Women seldom wear veils. And a would-be disinherited spouse has options.
Lee Carpenter
Lee Carpenter is a Maryland attorney whose practice focuses on estate planning and administration, trusts, and general business and corporate law. His estate-planning work includes a special emphasis on the unique needs of same-sex couples… More
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Niles, Barton & Wilmer, LLP
Niles, Barton & Wilmer, LLP is a full-service mid-Atlantic law firm representing individuals, corporations, developers, and contractors, as well as professional organizations and nonprofits in the following areas of law: estate and trust administration, corporate law, intellectual property, employment, commercial real estate, complex civil… More
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