Estate planning is an important process that helps to ensure that a person’s wishes are carried out after they pass away or become incapacitated. This process allows individuals to make decisions about their finances, property, and healthcare in advance, so that their loved ones and healthcare providers know how to act on their behalf if they are unable to do so themselves.
By engaging in estate planning, individuals can also avoid potential conflicts or legal disputes among family members or other beneficiaries. It can also help to minimize the financial impact of taxes and probate, as well as provide for the smooth and efficient transfer of assets to heirs or beneficiaries.
Estate planning can also provide peace of mind for individuals by allowing them to take control of their future and the future of their loved ones. It allows individuals to make important decisions about their legacy and how they want to be remembered, as well as to provide for their loved ones’ needs and well-being.
What is Estate Planning
Financial planning is the process of setting financial goals and developing a plan to achieve those goals. It includes creating a budget, managing debt, saving for retirement, and investing. Financial planning typically focuses on managing a person’s financial resources during their lifetime, with the goal of achieving financial security and meeting their financial needs.
Estate planning, on the other hand, is the process of arranging for the management and distribution of a person’s assets and responsibilities after their death or incapacity. Estate planning typically focuses on managing a person’s assets after their death, with the goal of ensuring that their assets are distributed according to their wishes and that their loved ones are provided for.
Estate planning typically involves the following steps:
- Inventorying assets: This involves creating a list of all assets, such as real estate, bank accounts, investments, and personal property.
- Identifying beneficiaries: This involves determining who will receive each asset after the person’s death.
- Creating a will: This is a legal document that outlines how a person’s assets will be distributed after their death.
- Creating a trust: A trust can be used to manage assets during a person’s lifetime and after their death. Trusts can also help to minimize taxes and avoid probate.
- Designating powers of attorney: This involves appointing someone to make decisions on a person’s behalf if they become incapacitated.
- Creating an advance directive: This is a legal document that outlines a person’s wishes for medical treatment if they become unable to make decisions on their own.
Estate planning is an important process for everyone, regardless of age or wealth.
Common Estate Planning Goals
Estate planning is about you, the person who is alive and in control of property, and those who will eventually control and/or receive your property. It is about your wishes and what will happen in the future.
Having worked with clients to develop estate plans, there are some common basic goals that are considered. This includes providing for loved ones, mitigating or avoiding probate, minimizing taxes, providing for the orderly distribution and stewardship of assets, protecting assets, and planning for incapacity.
Providing for Loved Ones
We all have preferences. These preferences include thoughts as to who should or should not get our assets upon our death. Without advance planning, state law dictates who gets what and when. These one-size-fits-all laws are not likely to line up with your preferences. This is particularly true where there are former spouses; children from another marriage, minor children, or estranged children; or larger families.
Planning can help ensure that your wishes are carried out. This can include making arrangements for spouses and children and ensuring that the assets are distributed in a way that sufficient to provide for their support. This can also include specific transfers. This may be as simple as ensuring that personal effects, such as a family bible or heirlooms, are transferred to those who will appreciate them. It may also include transferring real estate holdings or businesses to those who will be able to manage them.
Mitigating or Avoiding Probate
The probate process in Texas can be expensive. Even a simple probate can cost several thousand dollars. The process can also encourage property disputes between family members, which can destroy family relationships and result in sizeable legal bills.
Advance planning can help to minimize the impact of probate or avoid probate altogether. It can also help minimize the chance that one’s heirs and others get into disputes over property. This planning may include setting up different types of trusts, documenting and executing the legal documents so that property passes outside of probate, and including language in legal documents to discourage property disputes.
Minimizing Taxes
Despite tax reform efforts, we still live in a high-tax country. Absent planning, taxes can consume a major portion of your assets. The Federal estate tax is essentially 40% of the value of all assets owned at death. A few states still have death taxes that can add to this amount. Federal income taxes are nearly as high. The higher income tax states can come close to 10 percent. This does not even get to employment, sales, and excise taxes.
Advance planning can help eliminate or reduce these taxes. This can help preserve assets so they are available and can be distributed to the individuals loved ones, or if you wish to support specific charitable causes, to charities. There are a number of estate planning techniques that can accomplish this goal. These techniques range from creating family limited partnerships to take advantage of estate tax discounts, to holding life insurance policies in trust, to naming specific types of beneficiaries on your legal documents.
Providing for Orderly Administration & Stewardship of Property
Assets have a way of disappearing when someone dies. Other assets end up being mismanaged while everyone figures out who gets what. This can cause the value of your assets to diminish considerably. We often see this when a business owner dies. Without proper planning, the business often ends up having to close shortly after the owner’s death.
Planning can help avoid this. It can help ensure that property goes to those who you want it to go to and that property is managed appropriately during the probate process or transferred before probate closes. There are a number of techniques for this, including naming executors and trustees and leaving them specific instructions, deeds to transfer assets on death, and buy-sell agreements to transfer business interests.
Protecting Assets
You have worked hard to accumulate your assets. Lawsuits, divorces, and other events can significantly reduce the size of your estate. How assets are held and titled and who they are transferred to can leave the assets exposed to creditors and others. This can even include your heirs’ creditors.
Planning can help protect your assets and limit liability exposure. This can include forming spendthrift trusts and foreign and domestic asset protection trusts and the use of business entities and structures to segregate assets from sources of liability exposure.
Providing for Incapacity
Mental health is something that most of us take for granted. We assume that we will always enjoy the full use of our mental faculties. But the research paints a different picture. The research shows that one in ten individuals over 65 are diagnosed with dementia. This number increases significantly with age.
Planning for incapacity is to structure one’s affairs so that resources and personal affairs resources in advance should the need arise. There are several estate planning techniques available for this. These techniques can help ensure that financial resources are available if and when the need arises. They can also ensure that the financial resources are not wasted and do not disqualify the individual for Medicare and other benefits.
These techniques can include leaving advance instructions. These instructions can name third parties to carry out our wishes should the individual not be capable of making their own decisions. These instructions can cover everything from how to manage money to what healthcare decisions to make.
Hiring an Experienced Estate Planning Attorney
As estate planning attorneys in Houston, we have worked on estates where planning was not done or the planning did not work as intended. This provides us with a unique perspective in preparing estate plans that help carry out the client’s intended goals.
Call today to discuss your estate planning needs, 281-219-9090
Our Houston Probate Attorneys provide a full range of probate services to our clients. Affordable rates, fixed fees, and payment plans are available. We provide step-by-step instructions, guidance, checklists, and more for completing the probate process. We have years of combined experience we can use to support and guide you with probate and estate matters. Call us today for a FREE attorney consultation.
Disclaimer
The content of this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information presented may not apply to your situation and should not be acted upon without consulting a qualified probate attorney. We encourage you to seek the advice of a competent attorney with any legal questions you may have.
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