The over­all plan­ning of a person’s wealth is estate plan­ning. All of the assets owned or con­trolled by a dece­dent and the debts that were the respon­si­bil­ity of the dece­dent at the time of death are included in estate plan­ning. Estate plan­ning includes the prepa­ra­tion of a will and/or trust and the plan­ning for taxes after the individual’s death. In order to meet a person’s goals with respect to prepar­ing for inca­pac­ity and death, numer­ous fac­tors such as finan­cial, estate law, insur­ance, invest­ment, and tax impli­ca­tions must be taken into consideration.

Usu­ally, estate plan­ning includes;

• cre­ation of a will;
• lim­it­ing estate taxes by set­ting up trust accounts in the name of beneficiaries;
• appoint­ing a guardian for liv­ing dependents;
• appoint­ing an execu­tor of the estate to over­see the terms of the will;
• set­ting up meth­ods and means by which assets are trans­ferred to ben­e­fi­cia­ries out­side of probate;
• review­ing and revis­ing busi­ness agree­ments so that the pass­ing of busi­ness inter­ests under the busi­ness agree­ment does not con­flict with the terms of a will or trust;
• mak­ing funeral arrange­ments; and
• estab­lish­ment of annual gift­ing to reduce the tax­able estate.

Being Pre­pared

Related to estate plan­ning is an area of the law that plans for events hap­pen­ing dur­ing a person’s life­time, such as inca­pac­ity and pro­longed ill­ness.  This type of plan­ning typ­i­cally includes:

• Cre­ation of a power of attor­ney that appoints a agent-in-fact to man­age one’s finan­cial affairs;
• Appoint­ment of an agent-in-fact under a med­ical power of attor­ney to make med­ical deci­sions dur­ing peri­ods of inca­pac­ity or illness;
• Prepar­ing a state­ment of pref­er­ence for a guardian, either in a will or in a stand alone document;
• Exe­cut­ing a writ­ten advance health care direc­tive, which is com­monly known as a “liv­ing will”, so that one’s end of life pref­er­ences may be made known and com­mu­ni­cated directly to his or her physician.

Time and time again, we hear of those that waited until tomor­row to begin plan­ning, and sadly, tomor­row was one day too late.  Don’t let the state or other’s try to decide what you really wanted when it’s too late for you to tell them.   Con­tact us to sched­ule an appoint­ment and we’ll guide you so that you may make your deci­sions and wishes known now.

Tomor­row is often the busiest day of the year.
— Span­ish proverb