Estate Planning
Estate Planning is the process of determining how your wealth and assets should be transferred to the heirs of your choice: your children, grandchildren, friends, families, charitable causes, etc. and then deciding which legal tools and structures to use to best meet your estate planning goals.
Estate planning is not simply reducing or eliminating taxes and avoiding probate. Only after establishing how you want your estate’s assets to be distributed should you consider ways to reduce taxes and avoid probate. From there, good estate plans deal with a host of other issues. Now, with all but a few estates exempt from the federal estate tax, those other issues are, or should be, at the forefront of estate planning.
An estate plan is to ensure that you are taken care of the rest of your life and that your wealth is transferred to the people you want to have it. A good estate plan ensures these goals are accomplished with as much efficiency and as little cost as possible. An estate plan addresses the management and distribution of an individual’s property and financial obligations after he or she dies with financial tools such as wills, revocable living trusts and power of attorney.
For a comprehensive overview of Estate Planning, please start with our article:
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Estate Planning for ‘Modern Families’
The make-up of the modern family has changed quite a bit over the years. Therefore, traditional estate plans won’t work well for many families these days. A traditional plan is for couples who are in their first and only marriage and have only kids from that marriage. Different plans, tools, and strategies might be needed […]
How to Keep Your Heirs from Battling Over Your Things
When estate planners get together after work, inevitably they swap stories about the rancorous family battles over dividing estates they witnessed. Often, the worst estate battles are over items that seem of little or no value to outsiders. Old furnishings or household items, seemingly meaningless memento and similar items often stir up deep conflicts among […]
What Happens When You Neglect Your Estate Plan [TRUE STORIES]
Many people have their estate plans on the backburner. Two fairly recent cases show why procrastinating about or neglecting an estate plan is dangerous. In the first case, a family corporation’s ownership was divided among the husband, wife, and two adult sons. The wife passed away first. There apparently was no will, and no estate […]
How To Craft the Perfect Will for Your Estate Plan: Part II
In last week’s edition of Retirement Watch Weekly, we discussed ways to construct a will to maximize the inheritance you pass on to your heirs. In this week’s, we’ll continue exploring this topic. Know your Children & Anticipate Issues with Your Estate Naming the oldest adult child as executor of an estate is very common […]
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How To Craft the Perfect Will for Your Estate Plan
It doesn’t take much to tarnish a gem of an estate plan, and with it your legacy. A misplaced word, missing clause, or miscommunication between lawyer and client can send your will and your ordered estate plan spinning into chaos. You can avoid such a fate. Follow these last will and testament guidelines, and you’ll […]
Runaway Guardianships: Three Steps to Avoiding Them
I never would have guessed that Britney Spears would be the name and face that makes the case for having your estate plan in order, but that’s the current reality. The 39-year-old entertainer has been under a conservatorship since 2008. That means she was deemed unable to care for herself and not qualified to make […]
Common But Surprising Estate Planning Problems and How to Identify Them
Many estate plans look solid on the surface, but a deep dive into a plan, and especially into the dynamics around it, often reveals a plan with a serious problem or two. Estate owners are surprised when these problems are pointed out to them. If they aren’t fortunate enough to have the problems revealed, their […]
How to Shelter Your Estate Plan from Disasters [Part 2]
In last week’s edition of Retirement Watch Weekly, I shared my checklist on how to protect your estate plan from the kinds of disasters people rarely consider. Today, let’s wrap up the checklist with steps 4 through 7: Step 4: Document your property. To recover all or most of what you lose in a disaster, […]
