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How Your Financial and Estate Planning Team Has Your Back

Comprehensive estate and financial plans are not just for the wealthy. Anyone who cares for a person or cause and who wants to provide for the person or cause after they die can benefit from such plans. Along with comprehensive estate and financial plans comes a team to help you create, manage, and support those plans. This team includes your estate planning attorney, financial advisor, certified public accountant, insurance agent, and even your spiritual advisor.

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Estate Planning: Answering Common Questions of Senior Citizens

According to a study conducted by Caring.com, the percentage of people aged fifty-five and older who have created a will has fallen from 60 percent to 44 percent since 2019.[1] Although creating or updating your estate planning may seem like a daunting task, a proper estate plan can help address the concerns you may face as a senior citizen. We are here to help you. 

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Estate Planning Checklist: Multigenerational Wealth Transfers

Studies estimate that 70 percent of family wealth is lost by the end of the second generation and 90 percent by the end of the third generation. To help your loved ones avoid becoming part of this statistic, you need to educate and update your extended family about your wealth transfer goals and the plan you have put in place to achieve these goals.

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Successor Trustee Compensation

Asking someone to serve as your fiduciary (trustee of your trust or personal representative or executor under your last will and testament) is not something that you should take lightly. Serving as a fiduciary is a heavy responsibility that requires significant time and effort. If you plan to nominate a family member or friend to serve in one or both of these roles, you will need to consider whether you should authorize them to be compensated from the trust or estate for the services they provide to the trust beneficiaries or heirs of the estate.

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When You May Not Be Able to Use a Financial Power of Attorney

You may have signed a financial power of attorney (POA) that allows one or more people to act on your behalf if and when you become unable to act for yourself. However, a financial POA is not valid in certain situations. Knowing when your POA will not be recognized is an often-overlooked aspect of estate planning. To ensure that you have anticipated every contingency, you should discuss with your estate planning attorney the POA exceptions noted in this article.

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Defining “Fair Market Value”: The Case of Wilburn v. Mangano

When reading through a will or trust agreement, you may see language that grants a right to an individual to purchase certain property from the estate or trust at “fair market value.” At first glance, this phrase may seem a perfectly reasonable method of setting a suitable purchase price for a property to be sold at a later date. But a recent court case out of Virginia teaches an important lesson to those who have a will or a trust that relies solely on the term “fair market value” to set a future price of property.

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Types of Life Insurance and How They Can Be Used in Estate Planning

Many of us do not start thinking about life insurance until we get our first full-time job and the company’s human resources representative asks us if we want to enroll in the employer’s group life insurance policy. Most people think “Why not?” and sign up, naming a family member as the beneficiary of their policy, and then never give it another thought. Although this may be a good start, too few of us spend much more time thinking about life insurance.

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Your Estate Plan and Your New Job

Starting a new job is an exciting new chapter in your life. Depending on your company’s onboarding process, there can be a lot of moving parts. You may feel overwhelmed by the introduction and review of the many different types of employee benefits. Not only are there forms to be filled out, they need to be filled out properly to ensure that your true financial and estate planning wishes are carried out.

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