Estate Planning Dont's

Preparing for the future is an uncertain business, but there are steps you can take during your lifetime to simplify matters for your loved ones after you pass, and to ensure your final wishes are carried out. Planning for what happens to your property, or who cares for your family members, upon your death can be a complicated process. To simplify things, the following list can help you avoid some of the pitfalls you may encounter before, or even long after, you create your estate plan.

Don’t assume you can plan your estate by yourself. Get help from an estate planning attorney whose training and experience can ensure that you minimize tax implications and simplify the process of settling your estate.
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If you are like most people, there are probably a few emails in your inbox or outgoing mail folder that you never want anyone else to see. Whether it’s a receipt for something embarrassing you bought online, or a racy note you sent to a past love, there are some things you just want to keep to yourself. However, unless you include instructions regarding your digital assets in your estate plan, your loved ones may be able to get access to our online accounts after you are gone.

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Have your or someone you know tried to adopt a dog lately? You must fill out detailed questionnaires. Submit to a background check. Some kennels are even requiring a home visit from a “canine placement specialist” who can determine if Fido will like the dog bed and chew toys you’ve picked out. In the age of puppy mills and Michael Vick it is easy to see why people are being so cautious, but what has emerged is a system for picking out and acquiring a pet that makes the process of hiring an attorney look like a joke.

Perhaps it is time to put a little more thought into the attorney hiring process?

The first thing anyone who is thinking about hiring an attorney should do is a little bit of thinking about what sort of services they need.
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Is a copy of a will sufficient?

Many people keep their important documents at home where they are easily accessible. It’s not at all uncommon to find people with a filing cabinet or even a shoe box containing passports, account statements, deeds, tax returns, birth certificates and social security cards. Wills are often added to these files once the estate planning process is completed. In choosing to store your important estate planning documents at home, however, you risk having the originals lost or destroyed in the case of fire, flooding or theft. So what happens if the original version of your will is lost or ruined?

Generally when a person dies, state law determines what must happen in the state probate proceeding.
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A Simple Will Is Not Enough

 

A basic last will and testament cannot accomplish every goal of estate planning; in fact, it often cannot even accomplish the most common goals.  This fact often surprises people who are going through the estate planning process for the first time.  In addition to a last will and testament, there are other important planning tools which are necessary to ensure your estate planning wishes are honored.

Beneficiary Designations
Do you have a pension plan, 401(k), life insurance, a bank account with a pay-on-death directive, or investments in transfer-on-death (TOD) form?

When you established each of these accounts, you designated at least one beneficiary of the account in the event of your death.  You cannot use your will to change or override the beneficiary designations of such accounts.
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With Premiums Rising & Benefits Dropping, Is Long-Term Care Insurance Still Worth It? 

In a recent Wall Street Journal article on the shake-up of the long-term care market, Sally Wylie, 67, a retired learning specialist who lives on Vinalhaven Island, Maine says that over the past two years, the annual premium for her and her husband’s insurance has increased by more than 90%. She says that in order to keep paying their $4,831 premium on a policy that promises to pay out as much as $268,275 per person, “she has taken on a part-time landscaping job. The couple has delayed home maintenance, travels less and sometimes rents out their house.
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How Do I Name A Guardian For My Children In Case I Die? 

The hardest part of estate planning is contemplating your own demise, and that task grows even more difficult if you have children. It is painful to even think about what their life would be like without you. But if you don’t go through this thought exercise, you risk putting your children in a living situation you would never agree to should the worst come to pass. 
In this blog post we’ll go over a few different guardianship scenarios and best practices, but we would advise anyone seeking advice on this important topic to make an appointment with an attorney because each family situation is different, and your unique scenario will not be fully covered here.
Wills are where your wishes about guardianship should be formally recorded so that a court will recognize them.
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How to calculate estate tax

In order to predict how much your estate will have to pay in taxes, one must first determine the value of the estate. To determine this, many assets might have to be appraised at fair market value. The estate includes all assets including real estate, cash, securities, stocks, bonds, business interests, loans receivable, furnishings, jewelry, and other valuables.

Once your net worth is established, you can subtract liabilities like mortgages, credit cards, other legitimate debts, funeral expenses, medical bills, and the administrative cost to settle your estate including attorney, accounting and appraisal fees, storage and shipping fees, insurances, and court fees. The administrative expenses will likely total roughly 5% of the total estate.
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Medicare vs. Medicaid: Similarities and Differences

With such similar sounding names, many Americans mistake Medicare and Medicaid programs for one another, or presume the programs are as similar as their names. While both are government-run programs, there are many important differences. Medicare provides senior citizens, the disabled and the blind with medical benefits. Medicaid, on the other hand, provides healthcare benefits for those with little to no income.
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The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” that President Trump signed into law last month still has a lot of the country scratching their heads, trying to figure out if their taxes will be going up or down. One thing that is clear is that the new law makes a big change to estate taxes.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, about two-thirds (65%) of those surveyed feel they understand how the tax law might affect them and their families at least somewhat well. Before sitting down to look through the legislation, we would have put ourselves in that camp too. But the deeper into the weeds we got, the more we realized there was a lot in the bill that we did not know was there.
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Should you withdraw your Social Security benefits early?

You don’t have to be retired to dip into your Social Security benefits which are available to you as early as age 62.  But is the early withdrawal worth the costs?

A quick visit to the U.S. Social Security Administration Retirement Planner website can help you figure out just how much money you’ll receive if you withdraw early. The benefits you will collect before reaching the full retirement age of 66 will be less than your full potential amount.
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