Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Arizona

Re: adopted children

It is not required to list every person in a will you are not going to give anything to, only those who will be beneficiaries. We often list children in a will, and state that they are intentionally omitted, if one is to be omitted, so that they do not say they were unintentionally omitted, especially those born out of wedlock.

If your husband's children were adopted by another man, your husband's parental status would have been terminated by the court. So he doesn't have any children. His parent-child relationship was severed by a court adoption, substituting another father. Surely your husband is aware that his parental rights were severed.

It is not required to list all grandchildren. But, if you are going to list some, and not all, someone might say they were accidentally forgotten.

"Software" for wills is always dangerous. I realize some people place estate planning at a priority lower than other financial choices, and they may be willing to take some risk. Most software programs I have seen may claim to be Arizona sensitive, but I rarely find one that has wills, trusts, durable powers of attorney, health care advance directives, etc. up to our standards. I constantly have cases in my office where disputes, court contests and unhappy heirs result from the poor wording from either do-it-yourself documents or those prepared by non-attorney document services, accountants, software, "forms" users, or "garage lawyers." They don't know about beneficiary deeds, how to word anything other than one-size-fits-all, they don't fill the papers out properly, or how to use state-of-the art phrases in the law.

Good luck and best regards.