One of the biggest benefits of creating a revocable, living Trust is that it allows your successor Trustee to manage your affairs if you lose capacity. Sounds good, but who decides when your capacity is kaput?
That will be the question for the Court to decide on Monday, July 7th when a Los Angeles
California Wills and Trusts are not created equal. In this video, we describe the basic differences between the mental capacity required for California Will creation and the mental capacity required for California Trust creation. For those viewing this blog by email subscription, you can click on the title for a link to the video.
When creating a California Will there are a few basic steps that must be met from a legal perspective in order for that Will to be legally valid. In their simplest form, the two areas required for a valid California Will are the necessary “Intentionalities” and the required “Formalities.”
Intentionalities:
Intentionalities evidence a person’s intent
In order for a person to create a valid Will or Trust they must have “sound mind.” The term “sound mind” is short hand for a rather complicated set of rules for determining mental capacity. If a person lacks proper mental capacity, then any document they sign is deemed invalid under California law. A person