Trust and Estate Planning

You Hear a Lot About Estate Planning

Trust & Estate planning is an essential part of retirement planning although many people aren’t aware of all that it encompasses. So they put it off until it’s often too late. Let’s take a look at what trust and estate planning addresses and why it’s important to begin it ASAP regardless of your wealth.

Trust & Estate planning addresses these key questions:

• Do you want input into how you’d like to be taken care of when you become
  incapacitated?
• Do you want to be sure that your assets go to the people you choose when you die?
• Would you like to eliminate or minimize needless loss of some or all of your assets when you need long term care?
• Would you like to minimize excessive taxes on what you want to give your beneficiaries?
• Do you want to prevent public exposure, costs and delays of probate?

These are important questions and virtually everyone will answer ‘yes’ to all of them. Making arrangements to satisfy each question is what your estate plan is all about.

But what’s especially important is making arrangements to address these questions ASAP because of these 4 circumstances:

1. You never know when you’ll die
2. You never know when you’ll become mentally incapacitated
3. You never know when you may need long term care
4. Arranging satisfactory solutions to some of these questions requires 3 to 5 years lead
   time - at least - before these circumstances occur!
   

Consequences of not addressing these questions are (i.e. no estate plan, no trusts):

Incapacitation:

• You’re treated in a manner you would never wish to be.
• Someone other than your choice determines how your money is used and distributed.
• Your assets go to someone not of your choice.
• With no will or trust, your assets will be distributed according to state rules – not your wishes.
• Without a trust, you must trust your current spouse to give assets to your previous children

Long-term care:

Without long term care insurance or a lot of wealth, paying direct long term care costs can wipe out a small estate easily.

Gift and estate taxes:

If your estate is worth some millions of dollars, estate and gift taxes above an uncertain exclusion level in years beyond 2010, can rob half of it.

Probate:

Public exposure on who’s getting what can trigger legal claims and hard feelings between potential beneficiaries and other relatives. It's simply foolish not to have a trust for the probate qavoidance and privacy.

Gain more insight from these articles:

	Solutions to Common Estate Financial Planning Concerns
	Will Your Money Really Go Where You Want it to?
	Life Insurance as Part of Your Income Plan
	A Better Way to Gift Money to Your Grandchildren
	Protecting Your IRA From Unnecessary Taxation
	Estate Planning Trusts
	Charitable Remiander Trusts