Creating an estate plan
Regardless of age, every person living and owning property is advised to develop an estate plan. Basic estate planning ensures that your wishes are effectively fulfilled when you become old or unable to manage your own estate affairs, ensures that your estate goes to whoever or wherever you wish after you die, and ensures that your family is spared uncertainty, expense and confusion when you die. With the estate plan, it’s clear what you want, and there’s no room for confusion.
Everything you put in your estate plan, it’s what’s going to be done so long as the records are accurate. In this way, it is important that you know what you want and how to organize your wishes into your estate plan. As this process may often seem quite a big deal, it is advisable that you seek the assistance of an estate planning attorney with years of training and practice in this field of estate planning.
Estate planning tools
The estate attorney can help you prepare the following basic estate planning tools:
Last Will and Testament
Your last will and testament is your written wish declaring your beneficiaries and what portion of your asset goes to each of them. Every last will must pass through probate in a Surrogate’s Court in the county where the estate is owned, and must prove to be valid before the written instructions are administered. The estate planning attorney may also be involved in this process.
Trust
A trust is a legal agreement for the trustee to retain the asset(s) of the grantee on behalf of the beneficiary. The grantor is the original owner of the asset(s) and the holder of the trust. Once the trust is funded by the asset, the asset ceases to be the property of the grantor and, as such, the asset will be passed to the recipient outside the probate because the probate is only for the properties that are in the name of the deceased. Because probate is costly, many New Yorkers tend to use trusts instead of Wills, while trusts also have their downsides. Deciding between a will and a trust often boils down to the peculiarity of your estate and your desires. Nevertheless, it is in your best interest to seek the advice of an experienced estate attorney in deciding which document offers your particular estate the most favorable benefits.
Estate Planning Attorney near me 10025
You might ask yourself, “Do I really need to find a land planning attorney near me 10025?” Of course, you do. Finding an estate planning lawyer in the same county as you offers you an assurance that such a lawyer is up to date with the laws that affect you and your properties. To the best of his ability, he will use every legal resource available to help you achieve your estate goals.
Living will
A living will spells out your end-of-life wishes.
Pour-over will
It is often necessary to create a pour-over will. Once an asset is transferred into a trust, that asset can no longer be used by the grantor to his or her own direct benefit. Say, you want to create a trust for all your assets so they can pass down to your beneficiary anytime you die without undergoing probate. You may decide to leave your bank account out of the trust so you can still use it for bill payment until the day you die. What then happens to the account at your death? A pour-over will lets you transfer such assets into your trust at the event of your death, and by so doing, that asset would also pass out of probate. The estate planning attorney can help you prepare this highly powerful document.
Health care proxy
When you become old, you may lose your ability to make sensible decisions for yourself. Hence, someone has to be named to make these decisions for you, and the health care proxy is used in naming that person and binding them to their fiduciary duties to you.
