Should I add my family members name on my assets and avoid a will?
Adding your family members to your assets is usually not a recommended course of action. I know it's an easy way to avoid probate, which means maybe you do or do not need a will. However, there are so many complications that comes from adding family members to your assets, such as a bank account or particularly a home. If you add a family member to your home, it has unintended consequences like creating a disqualification for medicaid planning because by adding your family member to your home just simply to avoid probate, you're actually giving away part of that home to this individual. Under the medicaid rules, it actually counts as toward a gift, an unintended gift of course, but it counts towards a penalty period by which you would lose medicaid coverage if you had a long term illness and needed that coverage.