Jameson Stone Law drafts wills across Central Pennsylvania, and Daniel Jameson leads the estate work. The document itself is short and the law around making one is not complicated. What takes thought is a small number of decisions inside it, and those are the ones people put off, get wrong, or leave to a default they never chose.
The Executor
Being an executor is administrative work rather than an honour. Opening the estate, advertising it, tracking down assets, dealing with creditors, filing an inheritance tax return, keeping records the court may want to see, and then distributing what is left while everyone watches. It runs for months and it happens at the worst time in the person’s life. Naming your eldest child because they are your eldest child is how families end up with an executor who resents the job.
Two choices cause more trouble than they solve. Co-executors, appointed to be even-handed, mean every filing needs two signatures and every disagreement stops the estate. And an executor who lives out of state can serve, but the practical friction of doing it from four hundred miles away is real. Better to name one person who is organised and unsentimental, name a successor in case they cannot serve, and tell them both beforehand.
Minor Children
There are two separate roles and people conflate them. A guardian of the person raises the child. A guardian of the estate manages the money. They can be the same individual and there are good reasons why they often should not be. A will is the only place a parent can nominate the first, and the nomination carries real weight with the Orphans’ Court even though the court makes the final appointment.
The default on the money is what surprises people. A guardianship of the estate is court supervised, requires an inventory and annual accountings, and then terminates when the child turns eighteen, at which point everything remaining is handed over outright regardless of the amount. A trust written into the will changes that. It can hold the assets to twenty-five or thirty, release them in stages, pay for education along the way, and name someone you trust to make those calls. Most parents want the second thing and end up with the first because nobody asked them.
When a Gift Fails
Wills are written once and read years later, and in between things change. If a named beneficiary dies before you, what happens to their share depends on what the will says and, where it says nothing, on statutory rules of construction that may pass it to that person’s children or may not. Leaving it to those rules is a gamble on a question you could have answered in a sentence.
The other failure is the specific gift. Leaving the house on Second Street to a particular child works until the house is sold, at which point that child may receive nothing while everyone else receives their share. The same applies to a named account that was closed or a car that was traded in. Naming alternates, and being careful about how specific gifts interact with the rest of the estate, is unglamorous drafting that prevents most of the disputes we are later asked to resolve.
What We Handle
Straightforward estates where the decisions are clear and the document should stay short.
Guardian nominations, and a trust so an inheritance does not arrive all at eighteen.
Providing for a spouse and for children from an earlier relationship without setting them against each other.
Revisiting a will after a death, a birth, a divorce or a significant change in what you own.
Our Process
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Executor, successor executor, guardians, and who steps in if any of them cannot or will not serve.
Equal or unequal, specific gifts or a straight division, and what happens if a beneficiary dies first.
Witnesses and a self-proving affidavit at the same sitting, so probate never turns on finding anyone.
The questions people arrive with are usually about the document. The questions that matter are about the people in it. Who does the work, who raises the children, and who receives what if the person you named is no longer there to receive it.
Somebody organised, available, and able to stay calm while relatives are not. Being the eldest, or the closest, or the one who would be offended otherwise are all poor reasons. The job involves months of filings, deadlines and record keeping, and it is done in public view of everyone with an interest in the estate. One executor works better than two, because co-executors need to act together and a disagreement between them stops everything. Always name a successor in case your first choice has died, moved or simply does not want it. And tell them, because being handed this as a surprise is how estates start badly.
By putting a trust in the will, which is the only reliable way. Without one, a minor’s inheritance goes into a court-supervised guardianship of the estate that ends on their eighteenth birthday, and the balance is handed over outright however large it is. A trust inside the will can hold the money longer, release it in stages, allow payments for education or a first home in the meantime, and appoint someone to exercise judgment about it. It costs very little more to draft and it is the single most useful provision a parent with young children can include.
That depends on whether the will addresses it, and most homemade wills do not. Where the document is silent, statutory rules of construction decide, and in some cases the share passes to that beneficiary’s children while in others it falls back into the estate to be divided among the remaining beneficiaries. Neither outcome is necessarily what you would have chosen. The fix is a single clause naming an alternate for each gift, which takes moments to draft and removes the question entirely.
Who administers it. Who raises your children and manages what they inherit. And who receives a gift if the person you named is gone. Answer those three and the document more or less writes itself. Daniel Jameson leads the firm’s estate work, and the first conversation costs nothing.