legal advice

When couple create a will, they think that creating a single document for the family is the correct thing to do. However, many legal experts are of the opinion that husbands and wives should, in fact, make individual wills.
When a husband and wife make a single will it is called a Combine Will. If one spouse dies, the will has to be submitted in the probate court. When this happens, the information contained in the will can be made available to the public. This can create privacy issues for the family.
Furthermore, if the surviving spouse dies while the will is in the probate court, it can cause bigger headaches for the family. The family then has to get a copy of the original Combined Will and file it in the probate court for the second spouse who passed away. This can be even more problematic if the second spouse has moved his / her home to a jurisdiction which is different from where the first spouse’s will is being probated.
Taking this scenario into consideration, it makes more sense for a husband and wife to have separate Last Will and Testament. This does not mean that the wills have to written differently. The two wills can be mirrors of each other which can stipulate that the first spouse to pass away would leave his / her property and assets to the surviving spouse and after that the property and assets would pass on to the children.