Articles Posted in Estate Planning

So you’ve decided a living trust is appropriate for you. You’ve met with your attorney, made all the decisions about how you want any money in the trust to be spent, you’ve signed the document and placed it in a safe place.

But you’re not done.

Funding your revocable living trust is just as important as setting up your trust in the first place.

You know about Wills – hopefully you have one! You probably are also familiar with other estate planning documents such as a power of attorney and an advance health care directive.

But do you know what a trust is? Do you know what purpose it serves?

And…should you have one?

So someone, in his or her estate plan, has asked you to be their trustee. What does this mean? What are the responsibilities of a trustee?

A large part of the word “Trustee” is TRUST. If someone trusted you enough to choose you as the trustee of his or her property, it’s quite an honor. It’s also a big responsibility. What does a trustee do?

Maybe this is the first time you’ve ever been asked to administer a trust and you’re not sure what’s involved. If it’s a simple trust, your job could be finished in about six months, once the trust assets have been distributed to the beneficiaries. Continue reading

Assigning and updating beneficiary designations for your retirement plans, life insurance policies, and annuities are tasks that notoriously get ignored. While the process itself is usually pretty straightforward — putting someone’s name on a form — the consequences of your choice can be fairly substantial. Don’t wait any longer!

Who to choose as beneficiaries

You can name any of the usual suspects as a beneficiary — your spouse, children, or other relatives. You can also name friends, trusts, charities, and even various institutions like colleges, universities, libraries, and so forth.

We’ve all heard about the importance of reviewing and possibly updating important legal documents after major life events like getting married, getting divorced, and having a child. But many people overlook the importance of reviewing their own documents and estate plans after the death of a spouse.

In addition to having to cope with the grief, a surviving spouse is often heavily involved in administering or overseeing his or her mate’s estate. Often, this means that the surviving spouse’s own legal matters are, at least temporarily, put on the back burner.

It is crucial, however, that the surviving spouse’s estate planning be handled in as timely a manner as possible.

The worst estate planning mistake you can make is failing to have a plan.

The second worst mistake is assuming that if you have a plan, you’re done.

The truth is that regularly reviewing and updating your estate plan is an absolutely critical part of responsible estate planning. Defining your wishes about what happens to your money and property after you die is not, unfortunately, a set-it-and-forget-it task. Life changes can render various parts of your Will and other estate planning documents out of date, and that can lead to some serious consequences.

Some words in your Last Will and Testament may seem like a foreign language to you, but they could have significant impact on your beneficiaries. Per stirpes, a Latin phrase that means “by the roots,” is used in many Wills to define how your estate is divided upon your death.

But what does it mean?

A more common phrase, per capita, may help you understand the meaning of per stirpes. Per capita means “by the head.” Here’s a situation to illustrate the difference between per capita and per stirpes.

Say you’re a widow. The value of your estate at the time of your death is $1 million. You have two children, Jennifer and Ryan. Jennifer has two children, and Ryan has one. Continue reading