What does a single woman need in terms of an estate plan?  The short answer is the same as everyone else, a will or trust, financial and medical powers of attorney, and a living will.  These documents are the foundations of any estate plan, but they can, and should be tailored to any person’s unique situation.  Certainly single women have different life circumstances than a married woman or a single or married man.  The estate plan for a single woman needs to take into account your own circumstances, and reflect what you want to happen, not what everyone else would do!

For most of my married clients, setting up who gets assets seems to be fairly straightforward – the surviving spouse gets the assets, and then the children split assets when both spouses are gone.  Of course, that doesn’t always happen, but it is a logical, likely split for married couples with children.  Single women may have children to whom they want to leave assets, or a single woman may not have any children.  Each woman has their own priorities as to whom they want to receive assets, or whom they want to be in charge of things.  Simply because a surviving spouse might be the easiest choice for a married person to be in charge of distributing assets, single women are not excluded from the need to have a person in charge of their will after they are gone.  Whomever or whatever is important to you determines how you want to have your assets distributed from your estate, and single women just need to decide who or what is most important to them, as the default to a spouse is not an available option for the single woman!

 

Who, or What, is Important to You?

Everyone has people or causes that are important to them, and it isn’t always the same people or causes.  Some single women want to benefit their siblings, or their nieces and nephews with whom they are close, and that is certainly admirable.  Wouldn’t we all like to inherit a large sum of money from a wealthy aunt who loves her nieces and nephews?  I would love that to be the case, but I don’t have a wealthy, single, aunt to leave me a lot of money when she passes away.  All of my aunts have children of their own, and I assume they will leave money to their own children when the time comes, so the fantasy of getting rich from a wealthy single aunt will not be in my future!

 

My Children’s Unofficial Aunt – The Short Version

I also don’t know of any of my parent’s friends who would include me in their wills.  This may, or may not, be the case for my children, as my children appear to have an unofficial aunt who is single.  When I was in college, I worked as a teaching assistant (TA).  I had a student during my

very first semester as a TA who kind of latched onto me as a mentor and a friend.  She later became a TA herself and we worked together.  We worked together for about a year, and then my friend was a bit confused when I started sitting by another girl at the TA meetings.  The other girl was a TA with me during the first year I was a TA, but she had gone off on a mission for our church and was not around for a year and a half – the same year and a half that my student from the first year started working as a TA and became my good friend.  The new girl I sat by was my friend who recently returned from missionary service, who became my girlfriend, and is now my wife.  I wasn’t trying to ignore my former student / fellow TA / friend, I was just more interested in the person who became my wife!

Wisely, my student / fellow TA / friend decided that she needed to be friends with the other girl that became my wife, as she realized I would likely not be as close of friends with her when I married my wife.  I can see that as a perfectly logical choice, as I don’t hang out with a lot of other women, especially single women, now that I am married.  I prefer the company of my wife over most other people, not just women, so I can understand why my former student / fellow TA / friend chose to be friends with my wife, so she could be friends with both of us.  As it turned out, the former student / fellow TA / friend never found her match, so she is not married, but we are all still friends.  My former student / fellow TA / friend comes to visit us at least once a year and frequently spends different holidays with us – Independence day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, birthdays – and we are happy to have her company.  She has also been on the journey with us as we have raised our children.  She knew us before we were us, and she seems to have adopted our children as her unofficial nieces and nephew.

This past August, we took our oldest daughter off to college at Brigham Young University (BYU).  My former student / fellow TA / friend lives not too far from the BYU campus.  My former student / fellow TA / friend has often taken our daughter shopping, gone to see our daughter and make sure our daughter is OK, and even taken our daughter to the airport for a flight home this past Thanksgiving and picked her up from the airport and took her back to campus after the Thanksgiving holiday ended.

I don’t know what my former student / fellow TA / friend’s estate plan says, but given the close relationship she has with us and our children, it is possible she could be the wealthy unofficial aunt that benefits our children.  Of course, not every single woman has official, or unofficial, nieces and nephews, brothers, or sisters that they want to benefit.  I have had clients who were passionate about the care of domestic or wild animals, so they chose to leave their assets to the Denver Dumb Friends league, or the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, CO.  Whoever, or whatever, a single woman wants to benefit in their estate plan, that just needs to be included in their will or trust, and the proper people or organizations will benefit when the single woman passes on.

 

The Importance of Choosing a Representative and an Agent

In an estate plan, you will need to choose a personal representative to carry out the instructions in your will, or a successor trustee to carry out the instructions of your trust.  These people are responsible for getting your assets where you want them to go, and have an important role in carrying out your wishes.  Married couples frequently choose the surviving spouse to handle such matters, but single women do not have surviving spouses.  A single woman should carefully consider who could handle these responsibilities.  Perhaps a trusted friend, sibling, niece, or nephew, or perhaps a professional fiduciary would work, but that decision is up to the single women and who she trusts.  Not everyone will choose the same thing – some may have relatives they trust, while others may not have family who can handle things for them.

The same is trust of who a single woman would choose for an agent to act on their behalf if the single woman became incapacitated.  Would you trust a sibling, parent, niece, nephew, or other family member?  Or, would you want to leave a professional fiduciary in charge?  Professional fiduciaries do charge for their services, but if you don’t have a family member who can handle things, then a professional fiduciary may be the way to go.  In any case, you need to choose someone you trust, but also someone who is capable of handling such things.  Sometimes surviving spouses are the default answer for married couples, but even surviving spouses may not be the best choice.  As a single woman, you can choose who will act on your behalf and who you trust to act on your behalf.  You can choose who that will be, and you can choose who can act in your stead, you just need to choose wisely.

 

Don’t Rely on the Default Options

You don’t want to ignore your estate planning as a single woman.  The default distribution after your death would be to your closest living relatives, which you may, or may not want to happen, and there really are not default options for someone to make decisions for you if you are incapacitated.  If you don’t set up who can make decisions for you, then your family would likely need to spend significant time and money trying to petition the court to be appointed in that role.  It is far better to set up your estate plan now, so that you know who will be in charge of things, who will get your assets, and you will know that your wishes will be carried out.  An experienced estate planning attorney can help you get your estate plan set up to do all of this.  To make an appointment with an experienced estate planning attorney, click the button below.