You work hard throughout your life to provide for yourself and your family and to build your net worth. Regardless of the size of your estate, proper planning ensures that your wishes are clearly defined and communicated with the correct legal formulas to ensure those wishes happen. Protecting yourself and your family isn’t as complicated or expensive as you may think. Doing it now saves your family from unnecessary financial and emotional burdens later.
Estate planning does more than tell your survivors what you had and who gets what.
A properly crafted estate plan allows you to stay in control of your property and assets while you are alive and will also address your own future needs in the event that you are alive, but unable to care for yourself or your financial obligations. It is the best way to ensure that your wishes are known and honored, all at the lowest financial and emotional cost to you and your loved ones. If you want to be able to donate any portion of your assets to charity upon your passing, a trust-based estate plan is the way to do it.
We work one-on-one with you to design a custom estate plan specifically tailored to you and your family’s particular circumstances.
With a trust-based estate plan, you can:
Designate how and by whom your assets and your personal health care will be managed for your benefit during your lifetime, should you ever become unable to do so yourself;
Dictate when and under what circumstances gifts to your beneficiaries can or should be made during your lifetime;
Determine how and to whom your assets will be distributed after your death, whether to individuals or charitable organizations;
Decide to create a charitable foundation in your name for your chosen purpose, and more!
Your first meeting will be for us to get to know each other better, help you to understand what your options are, and hopefully, to earn your trust.
A properly funded, trust-based estate plan will, ideally, eliminate the need for any Court involvement in the administration of the trust after the trust maker or makers pass away.
Very specific legal documents must be prepared to give the correct person or persons the authority to do anything at all in connection with administering the trust. Assets must be gathered and managed, formal appraisals of certain assets may need to be arranged, debts may need to be paid, and there are potential tax implications to be navigated.
In a Trust Administration, all of this is handled privately, which usually makes for a faster, less expensive process.
Occasionally, circumstances do arise which result in uncertainty regarding what actions the Trustee should perform (i.e. the trust is unclear what a certain beneficiary’s portion should be, or if there are hostile beneficiaries). In which case, the Court would have to get involved, if only to give instructions.
Your first meeting with us will be to give you an overview of the entire process. We will gather some information from you which will be used to create the documents necessary to act as Successor Trustee, so you can get started on the right foot. We’re here to help you every step of the way!
Probate is the court-supervised process for ensuring a deceased person’s assets are distributed to the correct people, whether the decedent had a validly executed Will or not. A probate begins when someone submits a petition to the court seeking appointment to act for a decedent. If there is a Will, that person is known as the Executor. If there is no Will, that person is known as the Administrator. In either case, this is the person with the authority and responsibility to see the probate process through to the end.
The decedent’s assets will be distributed according to the terms of the decedent’s Will, if there is one. In the event that there is no Will, then the decedent’s assets will be distributed to what are called heirs at law – the legally recognized persons entitled to receive a share based on their familial relationship to the decedent.
Once appointed, the Executor/Administrator will gather all of the decedent’s assets and inform the Court of the value of the entire estate. The Court issues an Order directing the Executor/Administrator to distribute all of the assets and pay debts. The Executor/Administrator is also responsible for keeping the correct people informed of the process at every step of the way. Without guidance, this is a very difficult and confusing process and can leave one feeling as if they are trying to navigate a literal minefield.
There are advantages and disadvantages to probate.
ADVANTAGES:
The acts of the Executor or Administrator carry the weight of the law, as the Court supervises the whole process from start to finish.
Entities like banks, life insurance companies, etc. are often easier to deal with when you have Court documents backing you up in your capacity as the Executor/Administrator.
The Executor/Administrator is potentially more protected from future liability.
DISADVANTAGES:
Probates are a matter of public record. Anyone can get a look into the family and financial lives of not just the decedent, but their heirs as well, through publicly available court records, and can even attend court appearances.
Legal fees and commissions due to the Executor/Administrator are set by statute and reduce the amount available for distribution to beneficiaries accordingly. While there are still legal fees and commissions due to the Trustee in a Trust Administration, these are generally less than and more flexible than in a probate.
Probates are time-consuming and must proceed at the Court’s own pace.
Proper estate planning before death through the use of a trust-based estate plan can eliminate the need for a probate altogether. Whether you’re ready to get started on your estate plan or are beginning the probate process after the loss of a loved one, or if you just have a few questions, we’re here to help!
