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<blockquote data-quote="Dave70968" data-source="post: 3110928" data-attributes="member: 13624">Yes, making people joint owners (or, alternatively, using transfer-on-death accounts) is one way of avoiding probate.&nbsp; It takes a fair bit of foresight, though, and a lot of trust that the joint owner won&#039;t abuse that privilege during your lifetime.&nbsp; Another option can be to use a trust.&nbsp; All of those necessarily involve giving up, or at least sharing, some degree of control over the subject property during your lifetime.I&#039;m sorry, I didn&#039;t phrase that clearly.&nbsp; I meant it as &quot;do you have any kids, regardless of who the mother is?&quot;&nbsp; I ask the question to determine whether there might be somebody else who would have a viable claim to your estate.&nbsp; Yes, even if you do, you can leave everything to your wife, but it&#039;s best to specifically disinherit them in your will if that&#039;s your intent to avoid the &quot;unintended omission&quot; problem discussed above in 84 O.S. 132 (sometimes, rather than completely disinheriting, people will leave $10 or somesuch token amount to make their intent abundantly clear).I think my next &quot;Ask a Lawyer&quot; thread will be about estate planning, and another about living will and end-of-life medical planning.&nbsp; This is kind of fun to do.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dave70968, post: 3110928, member: 13624"] Yes, making people joint owners (or, alternatively, using transfer-on-death accounts) is one way of avoiding probate. It takes a fair bit of foresight, though, and a lot of trust that the joint owner won't abuse that privilege during your lifetime. Another option can be to use a trust. All of those necessarily involve giving up, or at least sharing, some degree of control over the subject property during your lifetime. I'm sorry, I didn't phrase that clearly. I meant it as "do [I]you[/I] have any kids, regardless of who the mother is?" I ask the question to determine whether there might be somebody else who would have a viable claim to your estate. Yes, even if you do, you can leave everything to your wife, but it's best to specifically disinherit them in your will if that's your intent to avoid the "unintended omission" problem discussed above in 84 O.S. 132 (sometimes, rather than completely disinheriting, people will leave $10 or somesuch token amount to make their intent abundantly clear). I think my next "Ask a Lawyer" thread will be about estate planning, and another about living will and end-of-life medical planning. This is kind of fun to do. [/QUOTE]

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