Hi, I’m Bridget MacKay with MacKay Dressler Law Firm. And today, we’re going to talk about two legal concepts that come up often for us in estate planning, but are often misunderstood. And that’s capacity and undue influence.
So capacity really goes to whether or not someone understands what they’re doing. And it’s not an all-or-nothing kind of prospect. Your capacity for executing or meeting with an attorney about doing a will versus executing or meeting an attorney about doing a trust are different. But it does boil down to kind of three main things that you need to know to have capacity to execute an estate plan, whether it’s a will or a trust. You’ve got to know what you’re doing, right? You’ve got to know why you’re there and what’s the purpose of your visit with the attorney. You need to know what assets you own, where they are, how much they are. And most importantly, you need to know who they go to, who are your beneficiaries, who are the people who are going to receive your bounty, and how it’s going to affect them.
So that is, a little bit of a view and definition into capacity, which is very important. It underlies a whole plan. Because if someone doesn’t have the capacity to execute or create a plan, then that plan is likely to fail in the future. What you should ask yourself is, does this person understand what they’re doing? All those areas I just spoke about in the moment that they’re doing it. So reach out to us, like us, follow us, and subscribe.
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