Should a murderer inherit money from you, from your estate? That's what we're going to talk about on today's podcast. So right now, your beneficiaries are cute and cuddly and just amazing. They're perfect. You love them. They're oftentimes your children, your nephews, your nieces, your cousins, your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, your friend, your next door neighbor, someone you go to church with.
Now, I use the word murderer because it's easy to think about. But what about someone who's criminally sentenced for rape? What if they're criminally sentenced for drunk driving, assault, battery? Do you want them inheriting your money? Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe the answer is no. Maybe the answer is a reduced inheritance. Right? There's something called the
⁓ Slayer rule and if you kill someone you cannot inherit from them But what if they killed someone else not you they can still inherit from you Unless you have provisions and your will or trust the state. Otherwise, this is very uncommon For people to put in their documents. In fact, I've hardly ever seen it it really got on our radar last year and we insert it and
provisions where clients want them in there. And to think through some of this. again, you're like, I've worked my tail off my whole life and I've got a million dollars to my name, $2 million, $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, whatever that number is. And you're thinking, the kids, the beneficiaries, whoever's gonna get this money is great. My grandkids, they're gonna get it, they're gonna do great with it. But the reality is that we live in a society where
Half the population gets divorced. A large percent of the population has an addiction problem to drugs or alcohol or some kind of addiction problem at some point in their life. And we have a percentage of the population who gets criminal. They're criminally sentenced in a court of law. And the question is, do you want them to inherit from you? And some of our clients and prospects have said, have no problem. If they commit rape, murder, steal,
They beat their wife, something like that, go to jail. I don't care, they can still inherit from me, no problem. I would say that the majority of people we've had this conversation with say, no, I don't want them to inherit from me at all, or I want them to have a reduced inheritance. You're probably not gonna get this in do-it-yourself software. In fact, I've never seen this verbiage in any do-it-yourself software. I'm not saying it's there, might be.
But you really have to think through this. I have spent dozens and dozens of hours thinking through this and the wording and the verbiage and everything that goes along with it, the questions, the conversations with clients. So if you're saying, well, I just don't want anybody who's been accused of this to inherit. Well, someone can be falsely accused and a divorcing or divorced spouse can accuse someone of something just to spite them if they know it's gonna cost them their inheritance.
So that is probably not a good clause for many of the people that I have spoken with. What if you just say ⁓ they're criminally sentenced but they don't serve any time? Well then maybe it was light. Maybe it wasn't as big of a deal for them to get disinherited from you. What if you had some type of a sliding scale that said, the first time they're criminally sentenced, if they serve, you know, they're sentenced for one to two years and they,
get disinherited by 10%. If they're sentenced for two to four years, then it's 20%. If they're sentenced for 10 years or more, it reduces them by 50%. And then if they're criminally sentenced a second time, then there can be another tier, another amount of disinheritance that occurs. And then you could do like a third sentencing, third criminal sentencing, which is, hey, third strike and you are out, you get nothing.
