Why Everyone Needs to Keep Their Estate Plan Updated

As the world and its laws continue to evolve, everyone needs to keep their estate plans up to date. An estate plan is a set of documents, such as a will or trust, that dictate how assets will be distributed upon death or incapacity. An individual's current legal and financial situation should be considered to create a comprehensive estate plan tailored specifically to their needs.

Ensure Your Wishes Are Respected

The primary reason to update an estate plan is to ensure that an individual's wishes are respected upon death. For example, suppose an individual has recently acquired valuable property or has had changes in family structure (such as marriage or children). In that case, updating the documents that outline how assets should be distributed is important. If the documents are not updated, this could lead to disputes between family members and legal complications when probate occurs. Additionally, if laws change at the state or federal level, those changes need to be incorporated into the existing estate plan to remain valid and effective.

Obtaining A Power Of Attorney For Elderly Parents

Making important decisions for aging parents can be a challenging task, but power of attorney (POA) can provide peace of mind and clarity in times of need. POA enables individuals to make crucial decisions on behalf of their parents, such as managing their finances or making medical decisions when they are unable to do so themselves due to age or illness.

While it may be difficult to approach this topic with your parents, having these discussions early on can help ensure that you follow their wishes if their health changes over time. Starting the conversation with empathy and understanding can make all the difference.

In this article, we'll explore how to obtain power of attorney for elderly parents and provide helpful tips on how to approach these discussions with warmth and care. After all, our ultimate goal is to ensure that your aging parents receive the best possible care and support.

Your Rights As The Parent Of A Young Adult — What You Need To Know When A Medical Crisis Hits

As a parent, you are quite accustomed to managing your children's legal and medical affairs as circumstances require. If your child requires urgent medical attention while away from you, a simple phone call authorizing care can do the trick. But what happens when those “children” turn 18, now adults in the eyes of the law, and need urgent medical attention far from home?

The simple fact is that the day your child turns 18, he or she becomes an adult and has the legal rights of an adult. This means that you lose your prior held rights to make medical and financial decisions for your child unless your child executes legal documents giving you those rights back. Without the proper legal documents, accessing medical information and even being informed about your adult child’s medical condition can be difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

Keep the Government and Lawsuit Happy Opportunists Away From Your Children’s Inheritance

If you have a current estate plan, I'll bet you plan to leave your assets to your children outright and unprotected by age 35 or maybe a little later. Go take a look at your estate plan, and see what it does right now. And, if you don’t have an estate plan and you have kids or other people you care about, contact us today and let’s get that handled for you.

If you do have a plan and it distributes your assets outright to your kids -- even in stages, over time, some at 25, then half of what’s left at 30, and balance at 35 (or something along those lines), you’ve overlooked d an incredibly valuable gift you can give your children (and the rest of your descendants for generations); a gift that only you can give them. And a gift that, once you’ve died and left them their inheritance outright, is lost and cannot be reclaimed.

5 Reasons Why Shopping For The Cheapest Estate Plan Could Leave Your Family With An Unintended Mess

In most cases, from the most sophisticated business people with the highest net worth to those just starting in the workforce and on their path to adulthood, you very likely do not know how to evaluate estimates when shopping for an estate plan.

Shopping for an estate plan based on getting the lowest cost plan possible is often the fastest path to leaving your family with an empty set of documents (maybe in a beautiful binder, but not worth the paper they are written on) that won’t work for your family when they need it.

Unfortunately, we see the negative effects of cheap estate planning when family members come to us during a time of grief with that fancy binder that sat on the shelf for years sending out signals of false security, full of out-of-date estate planning documents, and find themselves stuck in what could have been an avoidable court process, or even conflict when that’s exactly what their loved one thought they had paid someone to handle for them.

Will Your Estate Plan Work When Your Family Needs It?

Like most people, you likely think estate planning is just one more task to check off your life’s endless “to-do” list.

You can shop around and find a lawyer to create planning documents for you or create your own DIY plan using online documents. Then, you’ll put those documents into a drawer, mentally check estate planning off your to-do list, and forget about them.

The problem is estate planning is more than just a one-and-done type of deal.

It will be worthless if your plan is not regularly updated when your assets, family situation, and laws change. Failing to update your plan can create problems that can leave your family worse off than if you’ve never created a plan.

The following story illustrates the consequences of not updating your plan, which happened to the founder and CEO of New Law Business Model, Ali Katz. Indeed, this experience was one of the leading catalysts for her to create the new, family-centered model of estate planning we use with all of our clients.

Before You Agree to Be a Trustee, Read This!

Being asked by a loved one to serve as Trustee for their Trust upon their death can be quite an honor, but it’s also a significant responsibility—and the role is not for everyone. Indeed, serving as a Trustee entails a broad array of duties, and you are both ethically and legally required to execute those duties or face potential liability.

Before you say yes, be sure you understand what it means to be a Trustee.

In the end, your responsibility as a Trustee will vary greatly depending on the size of the estate, the type of assets covered by the Trust, the type of Trust, how many beneficiaries there are, and the document’s terms. In light of this, you should carefully review the specifics of the Trust you would be managing before deciding to serve.

4 Common Mistakes Made On Life Insurance Beneficiary Designations

Investing in life insurance is a foundational part of estate planning, and when done right it’s a primary way to say “I love you” to your loved ones after you are gone. However, when naming your policy’s beneficiaries, several mistakes can lead to potentially dire consequences for the people you’re investing in protecting and supporting.

The following four mistakes are among the most common we see clients make when selecting life insurance beneficiaries. If you’ve made any of these errors, contact us immediately, so we can support you in changing your beneficiary designations on your policy and ensure the proceeds provide the maximum benefit for those you love most.

Revocable Living Trust Or Irrevocable Trust: Which One Is Right For You?

You’ve probably heard you need trust to keep your family out of court and may be out of a conflict in the event of your death or incapacity. And, if you haven’t, you are hearing it now. If you own any “probatable” assets in your name at the time of your incapacity or death, your family must go to court to access them. If you aren’t sure if your assets are “probatable” contact us to discuss.

But you may need clarification about whether you need a revocable living or irrevocable trust. More and more, we are seeing people come our way asking for an irrevocable trust, and so this article is designed to help you learn the difference and then get into an “eyes wide open” conversation about the right kind of trust for you and your loved ones.

Creditors And Your Estate Plan

Maybe you’ve wondered about your own debt or perhaps your parent’s debt—what happens to that debt when you (or they) die? Well, it depends, and that’s part of the reason you want to ensure your estate plan is well-prepared. How you handle your debt can greatly impact the people you love.

In some cases, you could inadvertently leave a reality in which your surviving heirs—your kids, parents, or others—are responsible for your debt. Alternatively, if you structure your affairs properly, your debt could die right along with you.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, an individual’s debt does not disappear once that person dies. Rather, the debt must either be paid out of the deceased’s estate or by a co-creditor. And that could be bad news for you or the people you love.

3 Essential Questions To Ask Before Creating Your Will Online

If you are looking to create your last will and testament, or will, online, you’ll find dozens of websites that let you prepare a variety of estate planning documents for very little money and even for free. With so many do-it-yourself online document services out there, you might believe you can create your will online, all on your own, without paying a lawyer to help.

And in some cases, you can create your will online.

But if you do, you need to understand how these services can backfire on you and your family. Online estate planning can be a catastrophe for those who aren’t aware of the risks. And as you’ll see, creating your will online without a lawyer’s guidance can even be worse for your family than if you’d done nothing at all.

4 Tips For Talking About Estate Planning With Your Family Over The Holidays

The holidays are here, and there's no better time than now to talk about your estate planning.

Estate planning is a topic that you probably don't think about very often, but it's one of the most important—and potentially confusing—decisions you'll make in your lifetime. After what happened for the past two years, talking about these issues is particularly urgent this time around.

That said, asking your dad about his end-of-life wishes while he’s watching football isn’t the best way to broach the subject. In order to make the talk as productive as possible, consider the following four tips.

Will The Coming Wealth Transfer Be A Blessing Or A Curse For Your Family?

Whether it’s called “The Great Wealth Transfer,” “The Silver Tsunami,” or some other catchy-sounding name, it’s a fact that a tremendous amount of wealth will pass from Baby Boomers to younger generations in the next few decades. In fact, it’s said to be the largest transfer of intergenerational wealth in history.

Because no one knows how long aging Boomers will live or how much money they’ll spend before they pass on, it’s impossible to accurately predict how much wealth will be transferred. However, studies suggest it’s somewhere between $30 and $90 trillion. Yes, that’s “trillion” with a “t.”

How Will A Recession Affect Your Family?

As you’ve surely heard by now, we’re in the midst of great economic shifts. The collapse of the crypto market, the stock market's roller-coaster, rising interest rates, dropping home values, and inflation through the roof are enough to make you sick. And it can make you sick unless you take the actions we are sharing here.

During every economic shift, whether it’s the Great Depression, the last Great Recession, or even during the pandemic, some people get rich while others lose everything. Whether your family got rich, lost it all, or just hung on by their toes, you can learn from what happened and create the exact future reality you want for yourself and the people you love.

Grateful For Those That Give Us Everything

What are you thankful for this year?

I love Thanksgiving. It’s generally low-key, full of good food, and amazing company. It is also an opportunity to pause and consider what you are really thankful for.

Included in most folks’ “top 5 things I am thankful for” list is. . . . family. As it should be, right? Family brings us all the feels - like laughs, joys, tears, frustration, and a sense of belonging. Family is the one thing that we all protect, good or bad. This is why now is the time to create a plan for those that you love in the event that the unexpected occurs.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death—Part 3

Following your death, unless you’ve planned ahead, some of your online accounts will survive indefinitely, while others automatically expire after a period of inactivity. Still, others have specific processes that let you give family and friends the ability to access and posthumously manage your accounts.

In parts one and two of this series, we covered the processes that Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and Apple offer to manage your digital accounts following your death. In part three, we’ll conclude this series by covering the most effective methods for including digital assets in your estate plan.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death Part—2

Last week, in part one of this series, we covered the processes that Facebook and Google have in place to manage your digital accounts following your death. Here in part two, we’ll continue our discussion, covering how Instagram, Twitter, and Apple’s collection of online platforms handle your accounts once you log off for the final time.

How To Manage Your Digital Accounts After Your Death — Part 1

If you have preferences about what happens to your digital footprint after your death, you need to take action. Otherwise, your online legacy will be determined for you—and not by you. If you have any online accounts, such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple, or Amazon, you have a digital legacy, and that legacy is yours to preserve or lose.

Following your death, unless you’ve planned ahead, some of your online accounts will survive indefinitely, while others automatically expire after a period of inactivity. Still, others have specific processes that let you give family and friends the ability to access and posthumously manage your accounts.