Elder Law Answers
Do I Have to Transfer My Mother's Guardianship If She Moves States?
I am the court-appointed guardian of my mother. This guardianship was created by the courts in Pennsylvania. To better car...
Read moreIf We Want to Make Changes to Our Will, Do We Have to Use the Same Attorney Who Drafted It?
- March 29th, 2018
Q
My wife and I drafted our wills with an attorney when our two children were young. We would now like to make some minor tweaks to the will. The attorney who drafted it kept a copy, and we have the original. However, we didn't like the attorney and thought he acted unprofessionally. Do my wife and I need to contact that previous attorney to request he return or destroy the original document or can we simply have a new lawyer update our will and invalidate the old one?
A
There is no reason to go back to the old attorney. Your new documents simply supersede the old ones. In your case, you have the original documents. In some instances, the attorney holds them. If that were the case, it would be helpful to the original attorney to let him know after you execute your new estate plan so that he doesn’t have to keep the old estate planning documents secure. Most law offices have several fireproof safes stuffed with estate planning instruments, some of them for people the office hasn’t interacted with in decades. The law office could use the additional space.
For the five components of a good estate plan, click here.
Local Elder Law Attorneys in Ashburn, VA
Meet Margaret O'Reilly
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Margaret O'Reilly
Margaret A. O'Reilly, PC
Margaret A. O’Reilly is an estate planning and elder law attorney with over thirty-five years of legal experience. Attorney O’Reilly graduated from Duke University with a degree in psychology, and received her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. For over 15 y...
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Meet Samantha Fredieu
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Samantha Fredieu
Hale Ball Carlson Baumgartner Murphy PLC
Attorney Samantha Simmons Fredieu is an associate at Hale Ball. Ms. Fredieu graduated magna cum laude from Vermont Law School where she was the symposium editor on the Vermont Law Review, a production editor on the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, and a member of the Moot Court Advisory Board. She has clerked for...
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Meet John Laster
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John Laster
Law Offices of John L. Laster
John Laster is a lawyer licensed to practice in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. He limits his practice to wealth transfer planning, trusts, wills, powers of attorney, health care decision-making issues, estate administration and related tax, elder law and disability concerns. Listed in The Best Lawyers...
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