This is a page that I am working on and will use to respond to the following questions.
Q: How much does an Estate Plan cost?
Q: What is an Estate Plan?
A: An estate plan is a plan set up by proper legal document that sets up how your affairs are to be handled in case of your incapacitation and after your passing. Most of the time it will include a will, trust, advanced health care directive, power of Attorney, deeds, assignments, and other personal instructions that relate to funeral services.
Q: I have a will; isn’t that enough?
A: A will can effectively dispose of personal and real property and appoint guardians for minor children. It holds a critical function in an estate plan. A will has to be supervised by the probate court and it also lacks the power to delay the distribution of gifts, money, or property until an heir is ready to receive them in the case of minor children. In some circumstances a will is enough, but more often it works best when coupled with a trust.
Q: What is Legacy Planning and how is it different than Estate Planning?
A: Estate Planning is a term that has traditionally used to describe all the end of life and death planning. Whether there is only a will or or only a trust or both. It is a plan for the transfer of all things that can be transferred of the individual.
Legacy Planning on the other hand, is an emerging term that is being used to describe an area of estate planning that deals with incentivized distributions through trusts, planned multi-generational and philanthropic gifting, and using the transfer of wealth to positively impact the lives of those who receive it.
Q: What is probate?
A: Probate is the state court’s supervisory process that facilitates the transfer of the the possessions and assets from the deceased to the living. All people who die without having first placed their assets in a trust among some other conditions will need to go through this process. It can take as little as 7 months and as long as five years depending on the size of the estate and competing claims.
If I don’t have anything in place when I die what will happen to my family and possessions?
An AHC what? What is an Advanced Health Care Directive?
Intestate, Testate, Testator explained.
What is a power of attorney?
How do I revoke a power of attorney?
Why is an unfunded trust useless?