What is a Pour Over Will in Wisconsin? | Attorney Explains - YouTube

Welcome back, I'm Attorney Thomas Burton.

I'm an estate planning and asset  protection attorney here in Wisconsin  

and today's topic is 'What Is A Pour Over Will?'

Now I see this question come up frequently  at my office and you may have heard the term  

either reading in the estate planning  literature or meeting with your attorney  

where they mention a Pour Over Will and  many people have heard of a last will  

and testament or a will but they  will ask me what is a Pour Over Will.

Well Pour Over Will is just a term of art, we  lawyers use to describe a certain type of will  

used with a trust plan, generally, with a  revocable living trust, we'll talk about having a  

pour over will alongside the trust. So if you form  the trust here, we want all your assets to flow  

through the trust and avoid probate but the  will is designed to be just in case something  

got forgotten over here, let's say this painting  behind me, was super valuable and it got left out  

of my trust somehow. I inherited it after I formed  my trust and I didn't assign it to the trust.  

That painting, the will would pour over  into my trust or let's use another example,  

inherited real estate. You formed your trust 10  years ago and then shortly a little time ago,  

one of your relatives passed away who you  didn't even know and they left you a one-fifth  

interest in a cabin. Now, you could immediately  deed your interest in the cabin into your trust  

and avoid probate on that asset but let's say  you fell sick and forgot to do this or what are  

unable to do this, well then the pour over will is  a shorter will that says, any asset I own at death  

that is not already placed in my trust, I place it  into my trust upon my death. So we design it as a  

backup plan to make sure every asset goes through  the trust. I always tell my clients we don't want  

to use this pour over will because it would still  require, in most cases, if the assets over $50,000  

to go through a formal probate court process or  an informal or formal probate court process but  

if there is an asset out there we still have  the will saying what should happen to it  

and generally, the will, will be  shorter and say, my trust will govern  

the disposition of my assets meaning whatever you  laid out in the trust, who gets the assets, that's  

who you want to get it in the will. So we don't  repeat all that information in the pour over will.

So today, as an illustration, I have a  glass here and my badger water bottle  

and this is the idea, the pour over will  would pour over those assets into the trust.  

So if you think of the glass as the trust,  that we want to hold all the assets,  

that's what the pour over will is doing, is just  pouring them over after death into the trust.

So really, when I think of a Pour Over  Will, I think of a glass pouring into  

or a pitcher pouring into a glass which is the  trust which then governs what happens to the  

assets. So that's where the word Pour Over got  started, using it and lawyers have adopted it  

as a way to describe what the shorter will  is designed to do alongside the trust.

Now again, it's not my goal when I work with  clients to use the Pour Over Will because the  

whole point of setting up a trust plan is to  avoid probate on the assets and save the time,  

money and expense of probate  court after your death and make  

it easier administration for your heirs.  However again, we have the will there,  

a shorter will alongside the trust and  that is how the pour over will function.

So this is a term I see confusion about. I  wanted to create a video today, going through  

the Pour Over Will, how it works because I know  others have this question out there as well.

So if this video has been helpful to you, please  consider giving it a LIKE, so that others can see,  

find and benefit from this information. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.