Estate Planning
Estate planning is a comprehensive planning exercise where you determine how you are going to accumulate, manage, and dispose of property, both real and personal, during life and even after your death. Necessarily, it also involves looking for legal means by which tax expenses on income, gifts, estate, and inheritance, can be minimized. When estate planning is performed correctly, you can be sure your desires and intentions will be carried out and your beneficiaries-recipients (normally, your family) will receive the greatest benefit of your estate.
Developing your estate plan, with the help of an attorney who can provide estate planning advice on legal matters, is perhaps the most important financial step you can take. Estate planning focuses your energies and induces you to take more active charge in the management of your finances.
Benefits of Estate Planning
If you are single, your estate plan will provide for the orderly transfer of your assets to those people or organizations you specify, thus reducing or eliminating the hassle for those who will assist in settling your estate.
If you have a family with young children, the issues of your estate will usually be more complicated. In this case, the benefits of a well-established estate planning will also be more profound. You would want to provide immediate access to cash to your family members while your estate is under settlement in order to cover their ongoing living expenses. Remember that it is not uncommon for courts to freeze assets for a certain period during which the proper disposition of your estate is determined. Your surviving spouse will have to undergo the hassle and stress of applying to the court for the required cash to pay current living expenses.
What a Well-Crafted Plan Should Provide
A well-designed plan that you can work out with your attorney must be able to provide you with a comfortable retirement income, financial income for your family, proper custodial care should incompetency or any serious physical or mental health problem occur, a minimum of taxes and expenses throughout the implementation of the plan, and expedient, efficient, and harmonious distribution of the estate according to your wishes after death.