Estate Tip Of The Month

Welcome to the first in a series of articles about how to get your “estate planning house” in order.

Many of you will say that you don’t have an estate and therefore do not need to undertake this task. But you will be surprised at how enormously important a good estate plan is for everyone in order to avoid unnecessary grief and expense for your loved ones.

There are several steps you need to take in order to have a successful estate plan. Briefly, you need to:

• Determine what your basic estate plan will be;
• Prepare a list of your assets and liabilities (or debts) (this includes everything you own including checking and saving accounts, investments, life insurance and retirement benefits);
• Decide who will benefit from your estate: who are your beneficiaries?;
• If you have children who are minors, decide who will take care of your children and control the money they inherit from you;
• Execute the following:
  1. A Will or a Revocable Living Trust;
  2. Durable Financial Power of Attorney for Finances and for Real Estate; and
  3. Advance Medical Directive

Our next tip will discuss Advance Medical Directives. Even if you feel you have no assets that merit planning, you need to protect yourself and your person by executing an Advance Medical Directive. In today’s world of medical advances and complexity, this becomes more important every day.

How will your family access your checking account to pay your bills if you are injured severely enough that you cannot do so yourself?

If you do not have a Durable Power of Attorney the answer is simple - they will not be able to do so without going to Court! The Court will then:

• Hold a hearing which will require testimony from friends, family and a doctor which can be very expensive and take several months!
• The Court, not you, decides who the guardian is!
• Supervise the guardian who must file annual reports.

If you have a Durable Power of Attorney in place, you can usually avoid all of these problems. Without it, do to the delays and expenses, your bills may not be paid and your credit rating may suffer. When drafted properly, the Durable Power of Attorney will: