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Tag: Will

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Estate Planning Documents You Need

Attractive Mixed Race Couple SmilingEveryone needs an estate plan, and every estate plan will contain a mix of different documents depending on the complexity of the estate assets and individual preferences. However, there are a few documents that everyone needs.

Estate plans come in all shapes and sizes. Some are extraordinarily complex and contain thousands of pages of legal documents. Other estate plans contain only a few basic documents. One of the interesting things about estate plans is the documents that make up the simplest estate plans are also part of the most advanced plans. These documents are the basic framework of estate plans. The Chicago Tribune recently discussed what these basic documents are in “Documents you need before you die or become incapacitated.” They include:

  • Will – At its core a will is simply a legal document that declares how a deceased person’s property that is not disposed of by any other legal means should be handled.
  • General Durable Power of Attorney – A standard document that allows a person to determine who should handle his or her finances in case of incapacity.
  • Health Care Power of Attorney – Similar to the other power of attorney, but it allows for someone else to make medical decisions for an incapacitated person.
  • Living Will – Gives prior instructions to medical personnel about what means should be used to prolong a person’s life in the event that the person is terminally ill with no chance of recovery and unable to give instructions at the time.

Meet with an estate planning attorney at Profit Law Firm, PLLC to determine what additional documents you may need.

Reference: Chicago Tribune (July 25, 2016) “Documents you need before you die or become incapacitated”

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Planning Your Own Estate

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In the past few years, many services have sprung up that offer to help people create their own estate plans—such as by offering them downloadable forms. These services are often inexpensive but also risky.

You can find a lot of advice on the Internet that will tell you that estate planning really is not that complicated. In a sense, that advice is correct. The core of estate planning can be very simple. However, that advice makes it too easy to be deceived into thinking that you can create your estate plan on your own without the help of a professional. What an individual client has to do to create an estate plan can be—and often is—simple, but that is only because experienced estate planning attorneys do most of the complicated work. Recently, the Northwest Indiana Business Quarterly discussed the problems of creating an estate plan on your own in “Dangers of DIY Estate Planning.”

The article discusses many potential pitfalls of creating your own estate plan, but they all essentially boil down to the simple proposition that if you do not have professional expertise in estate planning, then you are likely to make mistakes that could cost you and your family. These mistakes can range from very simple oversights, such as not knowing how many witnesses are needed to make a will effective, to very complex mistakes, such as failing to properly understand how your estate planning choices effect the taxation of your assets after you pass away.

It actually does not matter very much whether the mistake you make is simple or complex because dealing with the mistake will almost always cost your estate more money than you saved by creating your own estate plan.

Do not risk these mistakes. Meet with an experienced estate planning attorney to discuss your needs.

Reference: Northwest Indiana Business Quarterly (July 25, 2016) “Dangers of DIY Estate Planning”