Yesterday Sir Monkeypants and I went to get wills drawn up. This will be your PSA of the day: get a will!

Most people assume that if anything happens to them, their estate will automatically go to their spouse or (if not married), their parents. This isn’t true. If you die without a will, the government immediately freezes all your assets — and this includes any joint accounts, even if only one signature is required on those accounts. The assets remain frozen until someone applies to be the executor of the estate; the government will decide if you (or anyone else who applies) is the appropriate person. If no appropriate person comes forward, the government will appoint a civil servant after some period of time. The appointed executor will then distribute the estate as he/she sees fit.

The point here is that if you share assets with anyone, even your spouse, and you don’t have a will, you could be in a situation where all your assets are locked up/inaccessible for several months while this mess is sorted out.

In addition, if you have underage children and one spouse dies, some provinces require you to immediately set aside a portion of your estate in trust for the children (because they can’t petition the executor themselves). This could result in, for example, having to sell your house to get access to the cash legally required to put into trust for your kids.

As part of the will package, we are also getting Powers Of Attorney, which allow each other full access to all our assets if either of us become incapacitated in some way. Again, most people assume their spouse automatically has this kind of power, but it is not a default of marriage — in a case where no Power of Attorney exists, the spouse would have to apply to the government and go through a court case to get control of the family’s assets.

Many people think that getting a will requires a lot of morbid thought, but a will does not contain any detailed funeral instructions (because they are not legally binding, anyway — your family can do what they want regardless of your wishes), nor do they contain a detailed listing of your assets because this changes too frequently. Rather, you should give both these pieces of information to your executor.

Instead, to get a will, all you need to decide is:

• who will be your executor (if married, you probably want your spouse)
• who will inherit your estate (if married, probably you’ll want your spouse to have 100%)
• who will be guardian of your kids and executor of your estate, if you have underage children and your spouse is already deceased

Find a lawyer, plop down $200, and keep the government out of your family’s business.

Incidentally, a will’s executor would be responsible for the following:

• funeral arrangements
• finding out where all the assets are, and filing paperwork to claim them
• distributing the assets as the will dictates
• filing the deceased person’s last tax return and any other government paperwork required

Go now!