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[SheilaT]

35. It's never the heirs that pay estate taxes.

It's the estate with all the money. A fundamental fact that most people don't understand. When you inherit money, whatever you receive has already had the taxes paid.

But yes, make out a will. You should be the one deciding where your money goes to, not the state itself. Most people should have wills, and sadly, very few do, even those who, while they don't have enough to incur estate taxes, can leave behind a world of headaches for their survivors. I know of at least a half a dozen such situations right now. In one, a man wanted to disinherit one of his children. He made a video several days before he died, but the probate judge said it wasn't sufficient, and that child inherits equally with the two siblings. I know another where a woman is having to wait over a year and a half (apparently because of a filled court docket on the part of the probate court) to be able to sell the house that she and the man she'd lived with for many years but they never bothered to get married lived together in.