Because we live in a very mobile and transient country, many of us will spend a significant portion of our lives in more than one state and it is important to ensure your estate planning documents reflect this. You probably spent a significant sum of money paying an attorney to draft these valuable documents on your behalf. As such, you may want to pay a little more to make sure your estate planning attorney reviews them for validity in other states.

In most cases, a Will valid in one state may be valid in another if the following holds true: If your Will complies with the statutory testamentary formalities required by the state in which you resided when you drafted your Will, your Will is usually valid in another state. For example, if you lived in Iowa when you drafted your Will, and you hired an Iowa attorney to draft your Will, your attorney probably complied with Iowas probate laws. In drafting your Will, your estate planning attorney should have reviewed the testamentary requirements for creating a valid Will in Iowa. If you later move to a different state, your Will is usually valid there, as long as it was valid in Iowa. You should spend some time talking to your attorney about your Will and its validity in another state. You can also contact a new attorney licensed in the jurisdiction in which you move about the validity of your Will.

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Thanks again.

Dennis D. Duffy

Duffy Law Office, PLLC