How to resolve AdBlock issue? Estate planning is not just about avoiding probate, although that is often important. It is about protecting you, your family’s future and your legacy.
What would happen to you and your family if you were incapacitated? How will your family prosper without you? How will your family remember you?
With the big picture in mind, let us consider the issues that may be important to you, your surviving spouse, your descendants, and your charitable interests.
First, are you and your family protected if you become physically or mentally disabled? Appoint someone you trust to manage your finances and property, to arrange for your personal care, and to provide for your spouse and dependents.
A comprehensive durable power of attorney for finances and property management, or a living trust, allows your agent, or trustee, to step in to pay your bills, taxes and control your assets.
You also can authorize gifting to your family members should you need to receive needs based government benefits and wish to preserve more assets for estate planning reasons.
Second, a durable power of attorney for personal care allows your agent to hire care givers to provide in-home care, get your mail, and, if necessary, to place you in a hospital or nursing facility. And, an advance health care directive allows your health care agent to implement your health care instructions when you lack the capacity.
Next, is your spouse protected if you become disabled, and later when you die? If your spouse is dependent on your resources ensure that your agent and trustee, as relevant, have authority to use your assets (inside and outside your living trust) to provide for your spouse.
Determine whether your retirement plans adequately protect your spouse. If not, consider life insurance. Your trust can keep assets for your spouse’s use after you die and then transfer them to your children. If your spouse is unable to manage assets, have someone else manage your estate as successor trustee for your spouse’s benefit.
In regards to your children and grandchildren, the approach you take should suit each person’s own individual circumstances.
Consider whether any of them have special needs, creditor issues, spendthrift issues, or might still be minors when you die.
If so, then some shares of your estate may pass to special needs trust, asset protection trusts, or to minor’s trusts for their benefit. Also, consider your aspirations for what you wish to enable them to achieve.
Do you wish them to have money for college, to start a business, buy a first home; if so, your estate plan could be drafted to provide for such goals.
Your charitable and philanthropic interests may coincide with your own financial and asset protection needs.
You may wish to turn an asset, like a home, into a current stream of income by gifting it during your lifetime to a charity in exchange for charitable gift annuity during your lifetime.
You may want a tax deduction for gifting assets while living to see the fulfillment of a goal. Consult with a qualified financial planner about these potential win-win opportunities.
The foregoing ideas are just some of the important topics that may, to some extent, be relevant in your own personal situation.
The point is to think broadly about what is, or may, become important to you. Planning now will give you peace of mind and protect you and your family in the future.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. His office is at 55 First St., Lakeport, California. Dennis can be reached by e-mail at
