It is fairly common to hear the comment, “I’m pretty young and don’t have a family yet so why would I need an Estate Strategy?” There is a common misconception that just because you are young you don’t need to have a plan in place in case something happens to you. Allow me to dispel this notion and give you some food for thought on why you might want to rethink that choice.
There was a rapper, XXXTentacion, who was recently murdered in Florida. He was very popular among those who followed him in the hip-hop rapping music industry. And at the age of only 20 his life was cut way too short. But he apparently knew something bad was going to happen and even said so in one of his videos that went viral about him predicting his death.
Whether that was the reasoning or something else, XXXTentacion created a will in November of 2017. In the will he left all of his wealth and assets to his mother and two brothers. But there was someone else in his life at the time of his death…his pregnant girlfriend. What about her and the Will? Why wasn’t she and his soon to be new baby included in the Will? Guesses are that he prepared the Will before he knew she was pregnant and as such didn’t include his new unborn child in it.
So what does this mean for his girlfriend and her unborn child? Is she out of luck and now on her own with a new child or will she be able to be included in some way in the assets of XXXTentacion? Well, it depends. There are potentially 3 ways she could be included in his fortunes.
- Through the grace and concern of XXXTentacion’s mother and two brothers, they could decide to just give her some of his money so she could raise her grandchild. This wouldn’t be something included in the Will but would be something they decided after the Will was settled through Probate (most likely) in court. Not sure what the probability of that is nor has there been any new news on this particular topic.
- His girlfriend could contest the Will and take this to court to determine if there were any circumstances that would allow her to share in the wealth of the hip-hop sensation. She would have a reasonable claim given the circumstances and her current situation…at least for getting some money to help with their son’s upbringing and ongoing costs.
- Depending on the state laws, this could all be a non-issue and she just gets part of the estate based on the current laws. For example, in Idaho, there is a Title 15 in the Uniform Probate Code that allows for just this situation…
- 15-2-302. Pretermitted children. (a) If a testator fails to provide in his will for any of his children born or adopted after the execution of his will, the omitted child receives a share in the estate equal in value to that which he would have received if the testator had died intestate. There are some exclusions but based on what I know of this situation, she should be entitled to some of his estate under Idaho law.
Whether you are a hip-hop star or just a citizen, the same law applies. Hopefully this law will work for XXXTentacion’s soon to be born child and there will be a happy ending to this story for the mother and the newborn child. At least we know in Idaho there is a very good chance there will be.If you have any further questions about any one of these items, please feel free to ASK ME A QUESTION and I’ll give you some insight and direction in that area. And if you ever want to just sit down and chat about any of these issues, just CONTACT ME and we can arrange a time to meet (complimentary of course).
