Fort Hood, TX Estate Planning Law Firms & Lawyers

First, your 401k passes to your spouse under federal law and then to any designated beneficiary on a form you complete and file with the plan administrator.  It should not pass under your Will, but will if you have no spouse and have not completed and filed a designated beneficiary form. Second, if your bank accounts are "joint with right of survivor" or "pay on death," they, too, pass outside your Will. Third, your house can pass outside your Will and free of Medicaid Estate Recovery using a Transfer on Death or a Lady Bird Deed. Fourth, if the royalties are mineral rights, this approach could also be used. But you do need a Will, if only as backup.  Some title companies are uncomfortable with Transfer on Death and, to a lesser extent, Lady Bird Deeds. If you get an online Will (and I have seen those prepared by several vendors), it is likely to be inadequate and you are very likely not to execute it with all the legal requirements, leading to an intestacy.  The Will will not be worth the paper it is written on.  Moreover, those vendors have no skin in the game.  An attorney not only risks a bad online review, a loss of reputation at the court and among colleagues, but a malpractice suit -- and you benefit from the required malpractice insurance.  Until the Texas Supreme Court creates a Will form (which it has been working on for years), you and whomever you want to leave things to, are much safer with a Will drafted by an attorney and addressing your particular circumstances.  You will also find that a good estate planning attorney will provide much more than a Will:  documents to help you stay in charge of your medical care and finances while you are alive, information sheets and guidance for your executor, and counseling building on the information above.  You can be penny wise and pound foolish, or pay extra to an online vendor for a few other documents and risk going without important legal, tax and financial counsel, but is that really what you want?  

Generally, a deceased person's spouse and children are not responsible for the deceased person's debts, unless the spouse or children somehow agreed to be responsible for the debts (for example, by co-signing a loan).

Once a Will has been submitted for probate, it becomes a public document and can be read by anyone on the website of or requested from the local probate clerk.  You may think that your mother had no reason to leave things to someone who took care of her when you did not but she may have thought differently.  Since someone can make a Will in a "lucid moment" and a Will must be notarized with two witnesses, it would be very difficult to prove that she did not make the Will of her own accord, whatever her general condition.  In addition, undue influence must be so great as to overpower a person's normal wishes and desires.  While it is easy to imagine that someone was influenced by the care they received in their dying days, it is not so easy to imagine that a Will gifting the person who provided that care was obtained through undue influence.