1. George and Susan are sister and brother. Their mother, Cora, owns the house on Lawrence Road where they all live. In 1992 Cora deeds the house over to George and Susan, with the unwritten understanding that they will all continue to live there. George marries Evelyn in 1998. George's income supports the couple, and they live in Evelyn's house. Greorge dies in 2005. The Lawrence Road house is worth $300,000.00. George has no assets of his own. Evelyn claims $50,000.00 from the Lawrence Road house where Cora ands Susan live, despite the fact that the house was a gift to George and Susan long before George ever knew Evelyn.

Result: Evelyn gets the $50,000.00. No one ever intended this result. It could have been avoided with fairly simple planning.

2. Roger makes a Will leaving everything to his wife, Janice. The Will says that if Janice doesn't inherit, everything goes to Janice's mother, Louise. Roger intends that Louise will use the legacy to take care of Roger's children; but the Will doesn't spell that out. Roger and Janice are divorced. The legacy to Janice is automatically revoked by the divorce; but the legacy to Louise is not. Roger has forgotten all about his Will.. He marries Cathy, and doesn't make a new Will. Roger and Cathy are in a car accident. Roger is killed, and Cathy is disabled by her injuries, so that she can no longer work. Roger's estate amounts to about $500,000.00. Louise lives a month longer than Roger, and dies leaving her estate to her daughter, Janice.

Result: Cathy gets only 1/3 of the $500,000.00. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania gets about $50,000.00, and Roger's first wife gets everything else: about $283,000.00. This situation actually happened in a recent case. With any kind of planning it could easily have been prevented.

3. Mother has five children: Philip, Lisa, George, Hope, and Martha. The first four live in different parts of the country. Only Martha lives close. Mother's eyesight is failing and she needs someone to do her banking and write her checks. Mother goes to her bank and a platform person advises her to handle this by putting Matha on as joint owner of all the accounts. Mother does this. Fifteen months later Mother dies without a Will. Her bank accounts amount to $300,000.00 and her house is worth $200,000.00.

Result: Martha gets all the bank accounts ($300,000.00) plus one fifth of the house ($40,000.00). Her share of the estate is thus $340,000.00; each of the other children gets only $40,000.00. Mother never expected or intended this result. She took some very bad advice. Unfortunately this is not an unusual situation. With simple planning Mother could have had Martha do all her banking for her, and still have treated her children equally.