You can never go wrong in planning your estate with the estate planning attorney. Consider the following; have you considered preparing your estate? Do you know the appropriate documents required for the estate? Have you measured your assets and know their value? These questions can be answered as soon as you understand estate planning and planning with the estate attorney.
Estate planning is a way to protect yourself, your interest, your asset. Estate planning is presumably one of the most urgent you should attend to no matter your financial or medical situation.
The process of estate plans starts from valuing your properties and estate. To do this, you need to establish the value of your assets like homes or any other property, money and savings, shares and investments as well as any of your other possessions. Liabilities and debt should be however deducted to obtain the overall value of your estate.
How estate planning help you protect your estate and finances
Estate planning, includes what happens to your properties, investments both while you’re alive and well or dead, how you want to share your assets with relatives, children or partners, who are responsible for making such important decisions for you in cases of mental disability and, ultimately, the transfer of ownership of land. Through a number of documents, you can save your finances and prevent them from been ruin. Although it is advised you consult Estate planning attorney to help you with the appropriate document inclusion.
Will and Testament: this is one of the ways you protect your finances and assets and ensure they get to your loved ones or desired beneficiary. A will contains a detailed list of instructions as to how your asset or finances should be shared after you die.
Trust; Trust are important additions to your estate plans. They usually contain more advance details than wills of how your assets or finances are handled. Through trust, you can have anyone whom you solely desire manage and make financial decisions over your assets both while you are alive or dead as well as when you become mentally incapacitated.
Estate plans prevents probate
Probate is a judicial process whereby a will is proved in the law court to ascertain whether it is valid and true. Probate processes and long and disturbing. During probate periods:
- The assets of the deceased meant for the beneficiary is with-held.
- The probate processes takes month to be completed, during which the assets are held by the courts.
- Probate makes the statements of the will public. Having only a Will as an estate plan document would make statement of the will come to public knowledge.
Planning your estate would ensure that you avoid probate. Through revocable living trust, probate can be avoided. Revocable living trust is a written agreement which covers three phases of one’s life; while you are alive and well, when you become mentally incapacitated and lastly after you die.
A revocable living trust does not require probate because the properties were held in the trust prior to the death of the trustee. Signing a trust agreement on its own is not enough to stop a property dispute, but instead to transfer the properties to the trust and to sign them in the name of your confidence. Once the properties have been passed to the trust, they will not be considered part of your estate and will not be subject to penalties. This is called trust funding.
Other documents are:
Advance medical Directives- this is also known as medical or health care power of attorney. It is a legal document that expresses a person’s health care preferences for events where you are unable to make such decisions. A living will or advance medical directive document may be filed in court to should it be someone needs to be your guardian or conservator.
Durable power of attorney- also known as a financial power of attorney grants a person of your choice power to make key financial decisions for you when you are unable to do so.
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