What is Estate Planning?

Estate planning deals with the management and distribution your estate when you die or become incapacitated.  It involves issues such as:

    -Who will care for your minor children until they reach adulthood?

    - Where does your property go and how does it get to the right beneficiary?

    - What arrangements are made for your funeral?

    - What happens if you are hospitalized with a coma or are afflicted by dementia?

    - How can you avoid probate?

How Do We Proceed?

We will:

    - Sit down together while you tell me your situation and decide on your estate planning goals.

    - I will tell you how the law applies to your situation, so you know how best to avoid probate

       and accomplish your other estate planning goals.

    - You will then decide what, if anything, you would like me to do for you and I will tell you how

       long I think it will take and how much I estimate it will cost.

What is an Estate?

An estate is comprised of the assets that a person owns while he is alive or at his death.  But there are different definitions of an estate, and they are applied differently.

    -A marital estate is a divorce definition that categorizes property into two broad classifications: 

      marital and non-marital, depending mostly on when the property was acquired.

    - A probate estate is the property that a person owns in his own name alone immediately

      preceding his death.  While you may think that your residence (owned in joint tenancy with

      your spouse) is in your estate, it is not, because it was owned jointly and not in your own name

      alone.  The bank account that has a POD (payable on death) designation?  No, that is not part

      of your probate estate either.  Nor is life insurance, 401(k) and other like accounts that have a

      beneficiary already designated.

    - An estate for federal estate taxation is very different.  It includes all those things that the

      probate estate does not, plus a bunch more, even including some assets that the decedent did

      not own but merely had control over.

Probate

You’ve probably heard that probate is the worst thing in the world.  It’s not. But if you can avoid it, it is a good idea to do so (at least your beneficiaries will think so.)

Probate is a judicial proceeding. In terms of estate planning, probate determines whether you have left instructions for the disposition of your assets (e.g. a will), and if you have, it makes sure that your instructions are honored.  An executor is the person who is in charge of administering your estate according to the instructions you left in your will. 

What could be better?  Yes, well, what could be better is making disposition of your assets without having to resort to a probate court, and the time and expense that entails. And you can accomplish that through the correct estate planning tools.

Different Estate Planning Tools

Partly because of these differing definitions of an estate, and partly for other reasons, estate planning employs not just one device but several. It’s not just a will anymore.  Now, estate planning generally makes use of a will, a trust, power of attorney for property, power of attorney for health care (the living will), and other instruments.

Do you need a will or a trust? Or nothing? There is not a single plan that fits everybody. It depends upon your circumstances and especially upon what it is you would like to accomplish. Though there is not one plan that fits all, there is a plan that fits you.

This all may sound confusing and quite often it is. In order for you to devise the most suitable estate plan, you need to have a working knowledge of these different areas. I do my best to impart that knowledge to you, so that you can make a truly informed decision about your own estate planning needs.

What Will We Do For You?

In helping my client make an estate plan, I generally spend a good amount of time with the client, going over the basics until they are understood, and then dealing with how the various aspects of estate planning will impact that client's circumstances. By the time we've finished creating his estate plan, I want my client to know what has been done and why it has been done.  Estate planning is the client making the plans for his estate, once he understands how they work.