Instructions:
Review the background information below. See if you can identify issues with what the client wants that may pose a problem and think about potential solutions or ways of addressing each concern that you have identified. Once you have done this, refer to the attached comments that the instructor has provided that explores these issues in more depth. There is no need to provide any summary of this review, the assignment is simply to identify issues and think about solutions for these issues.
Based on your review of the background information and identification of issues and solutions, please prepare the following documents: a will; an affidavit of subscribing witnesses; and a health care proxy.
The will and affidavit should be submitted in Word format to the instructor by email and the health care proxy (using the PDF form provided) should be completed in returned as a PDF or image file(s) by email. Please use the sample will for Hyacinth Bush and the accompanying affidavit from your course text as the template for the will and affidavit of subscribing witnesses.
The due date of this assignment is 4/24/24 and should be uploaded to Brightspace. This assignment does not require or allow for submission of an initial draft for review and revision. The first draft is your final draft for this assignment. I strongly recommend that in completing this assignment, you look to the format in the graded and commented final draft that you have or will soon receive from the instructor for the second WTE drafting assignment.
Background:
Dr. Anna Smith, returned safely from the Amazon to her home in NYC. Her time in the Amazon was well spent: (1) she discovered a new species of tree toad; (2) came back with a new husband Roberto Sapo (a Brazilian national who only speaks and writes Portuguese and somewhat stubbornly refuses to learn English); and, (3) shortly after returning to New York gave birth to twin boys (Anjo and Diabo). Twenty years have passed and Dr. Smith has come to the law firm where you work expressing the desire to have a will prepared as well as a health care proxy. Mark Spencer and Dr. Smith remain best friends and miraculously, Angel, the asthmatic Chihuahua has survived (and is now in the Guinness Book of World Records as world’s oldest living dog and is now living with Mark because Roberto is allergic to dogs). Dr. Smith is in good health except for a drug resistant parasitic worm infestation in her brain that she picked up in the Amazon. When the infestation flares up, it can cause Dr. Smith to see and hear things that aren’t there but she is otherwise cognitively intact.
Dr. Smith’s assets are: $15,000,000 in cash; a row house off of Washington Square Park in Manhattan worth $8,000,000 which she owns in fee simple (no joint tenancy or tenancy in common); and, various items of personal property – including a rare monograph on tree toads. Dr. Smith wishes to leave: $5,000,000 in cash and the house on Washington Square Park to Anjo Sapo-Smith; nothing to Diabo Sapo-Smith (whom Dr. Smith regards as evil and doesn’t want his name even mentioned in her will); nothing to her husband Robert Sapo who has inherited a great amount of money from his family; and, the rare monograph and Angel to Dr. Mark Spencer (now independently wealthy); and, the residuary to the Anna Smith Trust to Protect Tree Toads.
Dr. Smith wants Roberto Sapo to serve as her Executor if he survives her and Dr. Spencer to serve if Roberto is unable to. Due to her medical condition, Dr. Smith is very concerned that her will not be contested. She also wants to make sure that should her medical condition decline and she no longer be able to make decisions for herself that Dr. Spencer make them for her. She is very worried because Anjo would never withhold life support regardless of expected outcome while Diabo would want to see her dead if he could and Roberto has told Dr. Smith that making those decisions would be too difficult for him. Dr. Smith wants ventilators, antibiotics and nutrition and hydration to be withheld if she is terminally ill and unresponsive with no reasonable expectation of recovery. Dr. Smith wants Roberto Sapo and Dr. Spencer to be witnesses to her will.
