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Judge helps bury trouble

• Dougherty County's probate judge offers tips for making division of assets to heirs as peaceful as possible.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — “Come to Georgia to die.”

While that may sound a bit morbid, it’s a phrase that Dougherty County Probate Court Judge Nancy Stephenson used Thursday as a way to communicate favorable probate laws in Georgia.

Documents such as a last will and testament — or “remote control,” she quipped — offer Georgians many opportunities for “staying in control of our lives” even after death.

Stephenson, a Tifton native who this fall will seek her fifth four-year term as probate judge, spoke to Albany Rotarians about probate law.

Her noon presentation was an appreciated display of dry humor interspersed with information that she said not enough people put to use.

“That was brilliant,” said one Rotarian as he shook Stephenson’s hand. Another added, “I think we should have charged a cover.”

More seriously, Stephenson said the most important thing a person can do is create a will. In Dougherty County, she said, too few do.

“Just having a will is critical,” she later said, “and a lot of people don’t and a lot of people are losing their property (to lawyers’ fees and taxes).”

Battles between heirs are common, she said, and can arise over tangibles that often are more symbolic than valuable.

Although it can’t be guaranteed that one’s will shall be carried out as written, the document does provide some safeguards.

A will, Stephenson said, should include information such as division of assets and also medical details.

“You have to specifically spell out that if you’re in a coma or a vegetative state, you want (a nutrition tube taken out),” she said, citing the Terri Shiavo case in which Schiavo’s husband and parents were at legal odds over her feeding tube.

It’s also important to designate an executor of the will, she said, and to ensure that the original document can be traced down.

“If your original will can’t be found at the time of your death,” Stephenson said, “there’s a legal presumption that you revoked it.”

Some of Stephenson’s top worst places to stash a will include “an ice cream container in the freezer” and “a safety deposit box that only you have access to.”

Stephenson added that “some people are having a lot of fun with their wills,” and cited cases in which a father willed his daughter money only if she left her husband and in which a man banned from smoking in the home left his widow cash only if she smoked five cigars a day. Others are opting to will assets to their heirs on condition that they graduate from school.

Stephenson suggests that people as young as 14 (as allowed by Georgia law) consult an attorney and create a will, and then have it witnessed correctly.

The judge said she doesn’t favor online programs that help users draft wills because the legal document “needs to be specific to our state.”

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