Estate Planning

Estate planning allows you to protect your assets, yourself, your family and loved ones now and in the future. It may involve providing support for a spouse and minor children, investment management, business operations, tax minimization, or making sure you are cared for if you are unable to care for yourself. Wills, trusts, medical powers of attorney, statutory durable (financial) powers of attorney, directives to physicians (Living Wills), and other estate planning tools not only allow you to designate who will inherit your property and wealth when you are gone, but can also make things much easier for the people that you leave behind by allowing them to avoid expensive and complicated legal procedures. 

Consulting an Estate Planning Attorney like Darryl Pratt can be extremely beneficial as it can lower estate taxes, decrease expenses, make sure that property is disposed of correctly, protect dependants, and distribute property to the appropriate beneficiaries in a timely manner. Further, through the use of non-probate assets, trusts, and a Will a testator can manage their finances and property so that their family does not have to go through probate or can at least minimize the time and expense of the probate process.

Some of the most common non-probate assets include life insurance policies, joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, payment on death accounts, and transfer on death securities.  An estate planning attorney can help you use these non-probate assets to avoid the probate process or at least limit the amount of property that goes through probate.  Combining this with a well drafted

Will can greatly limit the expense and time required for the probate process. 

It is also helpful to sit down with an estate planning attorney to determine what can be done to protect yourself in case of incapacity and understand the different tools available to protect assets and loved ones.  Without estate plan financial pressures, legal delays, and caretaker decisions often have to be made by loved ones when they are grieving or facing difficult life changes.  As such, surviving loved ones too often have to guess what the incapacitated or recently deceased would have wanted.  This can result in bitter family arguments and legal battles in the probate court. 

Our services in this area

• We prepare Wills, Revocable Living Trusts, A-B Bypass Trusts, Medical Powers of Attorney, Statutory Durable (Financial) Powers of Attorney, Directives to Physicians (Living Wills), Guardianships, Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts, Spousal Trusts, and any other estate planning document 
• We meet and discuss each document with you before signing
• We review and amend existing documents as necessary

Do you have questions or do you want to make an appointment in this area?

Call us at (972) 712-1515 or use our contact form.