The Basic Estate Plan

No. Missouri has no holographic will statute. RSMo § 474.320 conditions validity on attestation by two or more competent witnesses who subscribe their names in the testator’s presence, and there is no exception for a document written entirely in the testator’s own hand.

This catches people out constantly, often because they read advice written for a state that does recognize holographic wills. About half the states do. Missouri is not one of them.

If a handwritten will is all that exists, the estate is generally administered as though there were no will at all, under the intestacy rules of § 474.010. A will validly executed in another state may be a different question, which is worth asking about rather than assuming.

No, and this is the single most common failure in estate planning. Retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities and any account with a TOD or POD registration pass by contract to whoever is named on the form. The will is irrelevant to them.

The practical consequence is brutal and routine: a person divorces, remarries, writes a careful new will leaving everything to the current spouse, and dies with a 401(k) still naming the first spouse. The first spouse receives the 401(k). Courts will not rewrite the designation to match the will.

Check every account. Name a primary and at least one contingent beneficiary on each, get written confirmation from the custodian, and re-check after any divorce, death or remarriage. It costs nothing and it is the highest-value hour in the whole process.

Different jobs, different qualities. The financial agent needs to be organized, trustworthy with money, and available — institutions are difficult and the work is tedious. The health care agent needs to be able to make a hard decision under pressure and, more importantly, to make your decision rather than their own. The personal representative administers the estate after death and needs patience and follow-through.

Name alternates for every role. A significant share of the problems in this area come from a named person who has died, moved away, become ill, or is simply no longer close to you.

Then tell them. An agent who first learns of the appointment in a hospital corridor is at a real disadvantage, and a family that has never discussed it is where disputes begin. For what a fiduciary actually owes, see fiduciary duties and why they matter.

Usually not, though it is the most commonly given piece of bad advice in this field. Joint ownership does avoid probate, and it creates four problems in exchange.

The asset becomes reachable by your child’s creditors and can be drawn into their divorce. Adding an owner can be a completed gift with tax consequences. The joint owner can withdraw everything today, with no obligation to you. And at your death the survivor owns it outright — so if you have three children and added only the one who lives nearby, that child legally owns the account, and whether the siblings share depends entirely on their goodwill.

Adding a child to a deed also gives up the full basis step-up at death under IRC § 1014 on the transferred portion, which can create a capital gains bill that dwarfs the probate cost you were avoiding. A beneficiary deed or a TOD registration accomplishes the same goal with none of this.

A recorded deed that transfers Missouri real estate at your death without probate, authorized by RSMo § 461.025. You keep complete ownership while alive — you can sell, refinance, or revoke it — and the named beneficiary has no interest at all until you die.

Two requirements are absolute. The deed must expressly state that it is not to take effect until the death of the owner, and it must be executed and recorded with the recorder of deeds in the county where the property sits before the owner dies. It is prepared by a lawyer, signed and notarized, and recorded with the county for a modest fee.

It works well for one property passing to one or two capable adults. It works badly where beneficiaries may disagree about selling, where a beneficiary is a minor or has a disability, or where the property may need to be sold to pay debts. It can also name a trust as beneficiary, which is frequently the cleaner answer.

Someone must ask a court for authority. In Missouri that means a guardianship for personal decisions or a conservatorship for financial ones — a petition, a hearing, medical evidence, a lawyer, notice to relatives, and in many cases a court-appointed attorney for you. It is public, it costs several times what the documents would have, and it takes weeks at best.

Then it continues. A conservator files inventories and annual settlements and frequently needs court approval to sell property or make significant decisions, for as long as the incapacity lasts.

The court also picks the person. Family members can disagree about who should serve, and that disagreement is litigated. A durable power of attorney and a health care power of attorney together prevent essentially all of this, for a fraction of the cost.

Somewhere your family can actually reach quickly. A safe deposit box is a common and poor choice, because the box may be sealed at death and the person needing the will may have no authority to open it — a circular problem.

Give the original will to a trusted person or keep it in a fireproof box at home, and tell your personal representative exactly where it is. Give copies of the health care documents to your agent and your physician, and put a copy in the file at any hospital where you receive care. Missouri also maintains a health care directive registry under § 459.250.

The financial power of attorney is different — institutions generally want to see an original or a certified copy, so your agent should know where the original lives. And keep a short written list of accounts, insurers and advisors. Families lose more time hunting for assets than to any legal step.

For a genuinely simple situation, sometimes. We think this so clearly that we published a free basic estate plan tool. Having something is better than having nothing, and having nothing is where most people are.

The risks are specific rather than general. Execution errors — a will signed without two witnesses is void in Missouri no matter how clearly written. Missing statutory language — the § 404.710.6 express powers and the § 404.820 nutrition and hydration clause are almost never in a national form. Uncoordinated beneficiary designations, which a form cannot check. And no one to notice the thing you did not think to mention.

Get advice where there is a blended family, a beneficiary with a disability or creditor problems, real estate in more than one state, a business, an estate near the tax threshold, or any family friction you can already see coming.

Not especially well, which is the main reason parents of young children end up with a trust. Without one, a child’s inheritance goes into a court-supervised conservatorship until eighteen, or into a custodianship under Missouri’s Transfers to Minors Law, RSMo § 404.051, which generally ends at twenty-one.

At that point the money is handed over in full. For a modest sum that is fine. For the proceeds of a life insurance policy it usually is not, and no parent describing their wishes has ever said “give it all to him the week he turns twenty-one.”

A testamentary trust inside the will is the middle option: it costs little, it keeps the money managed to whatever ages you choose, and it names the person to manage it. It does still go through probate. A revocable trust does the same thing without the court.

Before a will can be admitted to probate, the court needs evidence that it was validly executed. Ordinarily that means testimony from the witnesses — who may by then have moved, become ill, or died.

A self-proving affidavit under RSMo § 474.337 solves it in advance. The testator and witnesses acknowledge the will before an officer authorized to administer oaths, whose certificate is attached, and the will then proves itself. A will can also be made self-proved later, after the original signing.

There is no reason to sign a Missouri will without it, and its absence is one of the more common reasons an otherwise valid will causes delay and expense.

Rarely, and this is worth being blunt about. The intestacy default in § 474.010 already treats blended families differently — where any child is not the surviving spouse’s child, the spouse takes half rather than the first $20,000 plus half.

The deeper problem is what happens after the first death. Simple mirror wills leaving everything to the survivor mean the survivor can then leave it all to their own children. That is not a hypothetical risk; it is what usually happens, and it is legal.

Missouri also gives a surviving spouse an elective share under § 474.160 — one-half where there are no surviving descendants, one-third where there are — that can override the will. Blended families generally need a trust that provides for the survivor while guaranteeing what reaches each set of children.

Flat fee, quoted before any work begins, and materially less than a trust-based plan. For most families the drafting is two to three weeks from the first meeting, and much of that is you deciding who fills which role rather than anything on our end.

The process is short: a free consultation, a recommendation with a number, drafting, a review meeting where every document is explained in plain language, and a signing with proper witnesses and a notary. Then the part people skip — going through beneficiary designations and recording any beneficiary deed.

Meetings can be in person in Wildwood or St. Louis or entirely remote. Missouri’s execution formalities still have to be met either way, which is handled — see virtual estate planning in Missouri.