What is estate planning? – The query might be creating doubts in a lot of minds. A reliable estate plan does a lot more to pass assets after your death. It streamlines the entire way your beneficiaries can handle the affairs in case you are temporarily or permanently incapacitated. Simply put, it allows you to outline the wishes and how they can be fulfilled for an effective estate plan.
Let’s navigate to secret legacy planning methods and analyze how you can ensure a perfect estate planning checklist.
1. Identify Your Goals
The first and foremost step to curating the perfect estate plan is identifying the possible opportunities. Everyone has different objectives when it comes to estate planning. It will allow you to ensure a reliable plan and identify the next steps.
- Check to provide for kids and known ones.
- Protect and manage the assets correctly.
- Avoid the requirement of the probate court for asset distribution.
- Eliminate the tax on your estate.
- Curate the perfect plan to manage assets.
- Ensure having the medical treatment along with seamless communications.
2. List Down All Sorts Of Assets
Before creating the estate planning checklist, try to finalize what all are the assets. After the death of the owner, the assets combine to become estate. Even if some assets are not included in the plan, those will also be considered in your estate. The final distribution of assets can be done as per the state laws governed by the probate court. Your beneficiaries will need to hire a lawyer to represent them legally. The majority of the estate plans allow you to pass the assets to concerned beneficiaries outside of the probate. It even helps in saving huge time, money, and resources.
3. Find Out What You Owe
Dying randomly doesn’t relieve due debts and obligations. In the majority of the cases, the debts are required to be paid by the estate before handing over to the beneficiaries. If the debts are more than the estate, the beneficiaries won’t be getting anything. However, the creditors can’t rely on beneficiaries if the estate is not able to pay the due amount.
That’s what makes it important to know what all you owe. You can manage the beneficiary’s expectations and estate management completely realistic. There are plenty of debts that are accounted for in estate including car loans, credit cards, business loans, and other financial obligations.
4. Figure Out Those You Wish To Help
One of the basic reasons to have legacy planning is to ensure that the available estate goes to your loved ones after death. Some even prefer to help some charity organizations as well. So, you need to list down who all are the beneficiaries along with their priority order.
However, it might not be easier to prioritize the people and organizations, but it is a necessity. After you account for all debits and other expenses, the estate might not be available in that quantity as you would have presumed.
5. Have a Plan for Sickness
Good estate planning is not just about what will happen after you die. It should take care of your medical care along with financial management if you get sick as well. There can be certain other factors that can make everything tough. So, it is a better approach to have an estate plan ready in such a scenario. In healthcare support, you can define the measures and care to be given to you. Someone can also get the authority to make the right medical decision for you. Include asset management in the estate plan in case things don’t go as planned.
6. Check For Life Insurance
Life insurance is one of the vital factors of many estate planning checklists. It is more suitable if you have other family members relying on the income. However, you should be more careful while purchasing life insurance. Sit down, calculate and check all available offers before investing in life insurance.
Take the help and guidance of an estate planner or financial attorney to figure out the right insurance plan. Life insurance can be passed to further people so choose which ones would be right to receive the benefits. The insurance policies don’t allow direct payouts to children under the age of 18.
7. Plan for the Estate Tax
Estate taxation used to be a major concern to deal with earlier, but that is not the same nowadays. The laws are constantly changing and not all estates fall under the taxation rules at the current time. The corporate trustee and various other factors are a reliable option for tax management and exemption. You can also move estates into trust to further pass them to beneficiaries out of the state. These trusts are independent entities to take care of the valid asset transfer in the estate for tax purposes.
8. Finalize if You Need to Create Trusts
A trust is a legal entity for holding the assets on behalf of one or more beneficiaries. The person making the trust is referred to as the grantor and the corporate trustee will be responsible for the grantor’s wishes. The trusts are important to pass the property to beneficiaries outside the probate. These are also helpful in protecting assets from creditors and handling the proper distribution of assets.
Trusts are a handy choice to avoid estate tax in various regards. You are allowed to pass the assets into the trust while being alive. Any income generated by the entity will be subjected to federal and state tax laws.
Wrap Up
If you still need any clarification or help, consider speaking to a reliable attorney. Estate planning can be a very complex process involving legal and technical documentation for court proceedings. A trustworthy estate planning attorney is the best shot to take care of all required documents.