Estate Planning

We spend our whole lives working and struggling to provide for our loved ones, hoping that our efforts will help make things easier or better for our children and other family members. However, a lifetime of dedication and hard work can be wiped out in an instant if we fail to take the simple, but important, step of creating an estate plan.

Estate Planning protects us both during our lifetime and after our death. Many people think they do not need estate planning documents if they are not "wealthy" or if they are not married, or for lots of other reasons. The simple fact is:

EVERYONE NEEDS SOME LEVEL OF ESTATE PLANNING!

Basic estate planning documents include:

  • Durable General Power of Attorney
  • Living Will with Health Care Surrogate Designation
  • Last Will and Testament
  • In many instances, in addition to the documents listed above, it is important to also have a Revocable Trust, which will be discussed in more detail below.

HOW CAN BASIC ESTATE PLANNING BENEFIT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY?

  • Durable General Power of Attorney
    You are the primary means of financial support for your family. You take pride in managing the money and adhering to a budget and prefer not to burden your spouse with these matters. What happens if you are in a serious accident that temporarily incapacitates you to such a degree that you cannot oversee the family finances, especially if you use a checking account in only your name for bill paying? What if both you and your spouse are incapacitated? Who will take over until you recover? Financial institutions will not permit others to act on your behalf without your written authorization. After an accident happens, it may be too late. This situation can be prevented in advance by signing a Durable General Power of Attorney, in which you specify the individuals whom you want to act in your place. A sound, well-constructed Durable General Power of Attorney is the single most important disability planning tool you can have. Not only does it open doors at your financial institutions, but it allows you to designate the individuals that you trust to protect you and your family.
  • Living Will with Health Care Surrogate Designation
    We all want to retain control over our lives in every situation. However, it is a fact that "bad things happen to good people" every day. If you are injured in an accident to the extent that you are unconscious and are not able to speak for yourself regarding medical treatment, medical and emergency personnel may be unable to administer life-saving treatment, or they may provide treatment that you would not want administered under certain circumstances. Or, you may be faced with a terminal illness or medical situation where you are only alive because of artificial mechanical intervention (respirators, feeding tubes, etc.). A Living Will with Health Care Surrogate Designation accomplishes two things: first, it allows you to clearly express what treatment or procedures you would want to receive if you were faced with the end-stages of a terminal illness or in a persistent vegetative state, removing the burden of making this decision from your loved ones. A Living Will with Health Care Surrogate Designation also allows you to appoint one or more individuals to make medical decisions for you are not able to speak for yourself.
  • Last Will and Testament (Will)
    Wills are not just for the rich and famous. The purpose of a Will goes far beyond the disposition of your worldly goods. This document allows you to virtually "speak from the grave" to express your wishes with regard to everything from funeral arrangements, to payment of expenses associated with your final illness, to tax issues, to great-grandma's heirloom silver. If you die without a Will, Florida law dictates what happens to your assets and who takes care of things. For example, even though you love your wife dearly, you know that she will not be emotionally able to handle the administration of your estate. In your Will, you can specify who you wish to act as your Personal Representative. Without a Will, your wife is the first person the court looks to. Or, you have a rare, signed first edition of Gone With the Wind that you want to pass to your nephew, who is an English professor. Without a Will, the book, and all of your other assets, will pass according the Florida's law governing Descent and Distribution, meaning your nephew will probably never see Margaret Mitchell's signature.
  • Revocable Trust (also called a "Living Trust")
    Not very long ago the primary reason people created trusts was to shelter assets from the so called "death tax", properly known as the Federal Estate Tax. If a person died owning a significant amount of property, the government would levy taxes as high as 55%, tremendously decreasing the amount that would ultimately pass to the decedent's beneficiaries. The amount of assets that could be owned without paying this tax has been increasing steadily over the past several years and all indications point to it being permanently fixed at $3 million dollars. Thus, the majority of the American public no longer has to be overly concerned with implementing a trust for the particular purpose of asset protection from the Federal Estate Tax. However, there are numerous other circumstances where the creation of a Revocable Trust is highly advantageous.
    • Privacy
      When an estate is probated, the Will and many other probate documents that provide details concerning level of wealth, beneficiaries, addresses, and particular assets become public record. This means that virtually anyone can view them. In fact, most courts have public access via the Internet, so documents can be viewed online. A Revocable Trust is never recorded in the court. Therefore, no one can obtain sensitive information concerning your family or estate.
    • Family Dynamics
      This includes many situations, only a few of which are:
      1. One or more spouse has been married previously and has children from that union whose inheritance he/she wants to protect.
      2. You have a child with a history of alcohol or drug dependency and you do not want to enable him by allowing a large sum of money to pass into his hands when you die.
      3. Your daughter is in a very bad marital situation and you want to ensure that her husband cannot ever benefit from, or have control over, the money you leave to your daughter.
      4. You have significant wealth tied to business related assets held by your family. You want your spouse to benefit from those assets after you die, but you want them to ultimately pass only to your direct lineal descendants.
    • Special Needs Child
      Your daughter is permanently disabled and is receiving governmental benefits that would be suspended if she received an inheritance, but you want to establish a way for her needs to be met when her governmental benefit is insufficient.
    • Medicaid and Long Term Planning
      Your wife has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and will eventually need to be placed in a long term care facility. Neither you nor your spouse want to exhaust your life savings with payments to the nursing home, leaving nothing for your children, and possibly impoverishing you. In anticipation of this, one thing you need to do is ensure that your wife will never directly inherit from you, because doing so would adversely impact her Medicaid eligibility. This can be avoided by causing her inheritance to pass into a special needs trust to provide supplemental care beyond what is provided by Medicaid.