The lawyer who drew up my will told me that the specific guidelines I suggest/desire being followed for the care of companion animals be attached in a separate document to the will and it should not be typed. I suspect he would suggest the same approach for the disposal of a small genealocial collection on my family, but am not 100% sure. I've seen explicit animal care instructions, mostly to do with set aside money, which mine don't, written into a will. I've always seen explicit bequest instructions laid out in the body of wills. So why is he removing these "wishes/bequests" from the body of the will, and why should it be handwritten? My best guesses are:
1) The handwritten nature allows some form of legal verification that I was the one writing the material, without the need for notarization, whereas a typed statement could have been written by anyone (altho couldn't my signature after typed material be verified?). 2) Keeping "protocols" as he referred to them (about the animals, in particular) out of the will, would allow me to easily change them without having to rewrite the will and renotarize it.It was quite clear I wasn't competely sure of how I wanted to do things, just a general approach. At the time of doing the will (essentially a simple one, with only a couple of token cash bequests, and the bequest of the balance of my estate to my sister), it was very important to get it done that day so as to remove an inappropriate beneficiary. I had typed up a prototype of how i would like the animals taken care of but it wasn't written in stone or well worded at that point. Would the situational aspects of getting the will done right away have caused him to recommend the handwritten attachments (which I was told, are NOT codicils, which he hates)? He did keep a copy of my rough draft, but there was no reminder then or since to rewrite it by hand and send him a copy which he would attach to his copy of the will. Is any/all of this standard operating procedure, given the circumstances or is this a questionable approach to these issues?
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