
Process Outline – Estate Planning
- Take a trip together with your spouse to contemplate the following actions and establish the basic plan:
- Remember, in a properly planned estate a couple can give away during their lifetime or at passing over $10,000,000 without incurring any gift or estate tax.
- Do you wish to pass assets during your life time?
- To Charity?
- To heirs?
- Establish living trust:
- Transfers assets into the trust from personal title
- Generally:
- Financial, brokerage, securities accounts
- Real estate
- Businesses
- Significant individual assets, e.g. artwork, collections and such
- Generally:
- Spouses are the original Trustees
- They serve as such until unable to do so then provides for a
- Successor Trustee that is a close friend, attorney, CPA, agent or adult children
- Needs thought and planning about what goes into the trust and how it is to be distributed at passing
- Establishes named beneficiaries of the trust/ estate
- Generally these are the same as your heirs; usually your children or other relatives whom you wish to be your beneficiaries but could be charities
- Requires attorney to draft, avoid internet or do it yourself versions. Can’t make any mistakes here
- Remember a Living Trust is revocable, meaning you can change your mind, as long as you are alive. Once you have passed it becomes irrevocable.
- Transfers assets into the trust from personal title
- Prepare wills for both spouses:
- “Pour over” types:
- Whatever you didn’t put into the Living trust while alive now is directed there by you will
- Executor is generally the successor Trustee
- Need an attorney here as well
- “Pour over” types:
- Following are key documents for each spouse:
- Prepare Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Matters
- Usually in favor of spouse or the Successor Trustee
- Allows holder to complete transactions outside of the living trust for the benefit of a disabled spouse
- Need that attorney again
- Prepare Durable Power of Attorney for Health and Medical Matters
- Usually in favor of spouse, qualified child or friend; sometimes the Successor Trustee; you get to select one you trusts for this
- Allows holder to make medical decisions for one, or both, of you in the event of disability
- Yes, use an attorney for this too
- Prepare an Advance Medical Directive:
- Your instructions to medical professionals for end of life care; staying on or removing life support when prospects of recovery are remote or unlikely
- Another documents for the attorney to do
- Here’s something you can do yourself:
- Prepare a “Living Will:”
- Necessary Elements:
- Your personal instructions to Trustee, Heirs, Children or others about what you want to see happen immediately after your passing and during the administration of your Trust or Estate
- Funeral, cremation, memorial services
- Information about your assets that is important to Trustee or the recipient
- Recommendations to Trustee about resolving conflicts between your heirs
- Provide information about the following, if they apply to you and your spouse:
- Locations of any of these:
- untitled assets,
- computer passwords
- safe deposit boxes
- combinations of any safes
- “hiding places”
- “buried treasure”
- Locations of any of these:
- Optional Elements:
- Bequest of any specific assets to particular persons or relatives not already stated in your Living Trust or Will
- Recommendations to heirs about their use of your assets, personal or financial futures
- Personal messages to Heirs, Trustee/ Executor or Others that you could not deliver during Life
- Statements, conclusions or commentaries about your Life that you may want to share with your Heirs:
- Contributions, successes, failures, hopes, joys, personal disappointments, regrets, etc.
- Necessary Elements:
- Prepare a “Living Will:”
- Prepare Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Matters
Not Necessarily All-Inclusive