Basic Estate Planning

“A well-crafted estate plan is a terrible thing to waste – don’t wait until it’s too late, plan your estate!”

Whether you’re young or old, wealthy or not-so-wealthy, single or married, a parent or without children, YOU need a ‘basic estate plan.’

Your ‘basic estate plan’ will protect you, your loved ones, and your assets, both during your lifetime and after your death:

During your lifetime, your estate plan will protect you if you become incapacitated, whether by accident, illness, physical deterioration, or simply because of age. Your plan will arrange your affairs, and appoint representatives to manage your assets and make decisions regarding your personal and health care in the event you cannot do so. Your plan may even make it possible to avoid a court-supervised conservatorship in the event you are incapacitated.

After your death, your estate plan will protect your family and assets, by arranging for the orderly post-death management and disposition of your assets without excessive effort, expense, or taxation. A revocable living trust might be used to minimize the cost, court supervision, delay, and publicity that a probate proceeding might entail. Various types of gifting arrangements might be used to minimize estate or income taxes. A business succession plan might be used to transfer your business to family members or key employees with as little adverse tax consequence and expense as possible. If your estate is larger or more complicated, the transfer of your assets can also be structured to take advantage of gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer tax deductions, credits, and exemptions.

Your ‘basic estate plan’ will be tailored to meet your own, unique personal and family needs, desires and goals, creating a custom-made plan that satisfies all your estate planning objectives.

Your ‘basic estate plan’ will typically include (a) a revocable living trust, (b) pour-over will, (c) durable powers of attorney for property management and personal care, (d) advance health care directives, (e) HIPAA medical authorization, (f) assignment of property to trust, (g) personal property memorandum, and (h) certification of trust.

After your documents are signed, you will ‘fund’ your trust by transferring your assets to it, and then coordinate the distribution of your life insurance policies and retirement plans with your estate plan by making appropriate changes to your beneficiary designations. After your trust is ‘funded,’ and you’ve made provision for your ‘non-trust assets,’ you will continue to manage and control your trust property as trustee, and trust income, deductions, gains, losses, and credits will continue to be reported on your personal income tax returns. You will also continue to manage and control your ‘non-trust assets.’

Advanced Estate Planning

‘Advanced estate planning’ techniques are typically used by high net-worth individuals to minimize federal estate taxes payable on death, to ensure sufficient liquid assets are available after death to pay any federal estate taxes that may be due, and to reduce the current and future value of a taxable estate. By taking advantage of certain valuation discounts, by charitable giving during your lifetime, or by using your lifetime gift tax exemption and annual gift tax exclusions to make gifts to your family during your lifetime, you can reduce the value of your taxable estate. As the value of your taxable estate is reduced, so is your federal tax bill.

Your ‘advanced estate plan’ may include one or more of the following: (a) revocable or irrevocable living trust, (b) irrevocable life insurance trust (“ILIT”), (c) special needs trust (“SNT”), (d) charitable remainder trust (“CRT”), (e) charitable lead trust (“CLT”), (f) grantor-retained annuity trust (“GRAT”), (g) grantor-retained income trust (“GRIT”), (h) grantor-retained unitrust (“GRUT”), (i) intentionally defective grantor trust (“IDGT”), or (j) family limited partnership (“FLP”).

If you would like further information regarding YOUR estate planning needs, please contact us to schedule a complimentary consultation.