12 Months of Estate Planning: A Plan to Get Your Estate Plan Set up in 2020
Estate planning can be one of the most important things you do for your family’s future, but it can also be overwhelming. Between heavy subjects you don’t want to think about, the need to do a lot of paperwork, and everything else going on in your life, it can be too easy to keep putting…
Disinheriting a Child and Other Considerations of a Last Will and Testament
Leaving your children out of your will is not a decision that is taken lightly. But sometimes there are considerations that you need to make that make it the more prudent decision to leave them out of your will. If you decide to disinherit children, it is something you should do as soon as you…
The Importance of Power of Attorney During Estate Planning
Your estate planning has many different parts that all need to move in the same direction in order to be successful. A vital part of this process is how to disseminate the various powers of attorney (POA). The POA will be one of the most important estate documents that you create, so you owe it to…
Maximizing Tax Umbrellas for Estates
You have made it your life’s work to leave your family with substantial assets to provide for them after you are gone. Legacy is extremely difficult to build, but the estate tax law in the United States does not seem to take this into consideration. Estate tax can rip as much as 40% of your…
Revocable vs Irrevocable Trusts: What You Need to Know
As you move into the latter stages of life, you want to know where your resources will end up when you pass away. Setting up a trust is an extremely common way to do this, and it can help ensure that your life’s savings will end up in the right hands. Here are a couple…
It has Been Awhile: The Top Signs It Is Time to Update Your Estate Plan
Are you thinking about updating your will? Have you had some big lifestyle changes that may affect your future finances? Have you always had a will but not kept up on updating it as your life has changed? If you have answered yes to one or all of these, it may be time to change…
Five Signs it is Time to Update Your Estate Plan
It is estimated that 58 percent of the baby boomer generation (those between the ages of 53 and 71) have an estate plan in place. However, once created, many people do not realize that updates may be needed from time to time. As a person ages and their situation changes, it may also be necessary to…
Three Reasons Why Millennials Need an Estate Plan
If you are younger than 45 or 50, you may not think you need to worry about estate planning. That is something you do when you start thinking about retirement, right? Those of us who are young and healthy have our whole lives ahead of us and plenty of time to worry about things like…
Top Three Advantages of a Living Trust
We cannot avoid death, but we CAN plan for it. That said, only 60% of Americans have made a will or living trust to help those they leave behind. When it is time to complete your estate planning, give strong consideration to creating a living trust. A living trust provides for distribution of your assets according to your…
The Importance of Insurance In Estate Planning
About 84% of Americans believe that it is important to have life insurance. But only 41% have any. That’s quite a disparity! Where do you fall in this equation? Do you have the life insurance that you need? We’re assuming here that you have already taken a big first step and are working on your estate planning….