Estate Planning

Protection for the Future

Estate Planning is much more important than just determining whether you need a Will or a Trust for distribution of your property after your death. Regardless of your age, decisions that you make today can help you keep a variety of options available later in life. Acting today without legal advice may cost you or your heirs tens of thousands of dollars in just a few years and may limit your ability to make a good decision in the future. An estate planning consultation is a relatively inexpensive way to avoid costly mistakes. Having a Last Will and Testament or considering a Durable Power of Attorney is never a bad idea, but there are instances where using a Revocable Living Trust as an estate planning tool may actually be a less expensive method of holding your property and allowing ultimate distribution to your heirs.

You need to know whether holding your property in joint tenancy with rights of survivorship or tenancy in common is best for you and the pitfalls of creating life estates in real property that may be impossible to reverse.

Likewise, you need to be aware of the potentially negative consequences of entering a second marriage without a pre-nuptial agreement and the potential of very negative capital gains tax consequences when you transfer your property to your loved ones during your lifetime.

Also, Advance Directives are great tools to allow you to maintain personal or family control of the nature and type of health care and treatment that you may receive in your final days, but initialing the wrong line can actually result in limiting the ability of your loved ones to make decisions that you want them to.

From time to time, our estate planning attorneys provide seminars for groups and communities.  Please call us if you would like for us to speak to your group or if you or your family would like to have a one on one consultation with one of our estate planning attorneys.