Estate Planning and Wealth Management

Whether you are newlyweds just starting out,

Parents with young children to protect,

A business owner trying to insure future ownership of a family business,

An empty nester looking to protect or pass along assets,

An about to be remarried trying to sort out your complex multi-family financial plans,

Or retired and finally have the time to think about these issues that have been nagging at you,

You need to plan your estate carefully, and soon.

Good planning is part of the legacy you leave your family.

Doing “nothing” in almost all cases is not good planning. With no action by you, state and federal laws will “plan” who manages your assets if you can’t, and will determine who gets your property when you aren’t around any more.

If proper planning is left undone or unfinished, unimaginable discord could be the result.

There are many steps in effective estate planning and wealth management. Almost every adult needs an up to date will. But that is, at best, the first step, and maybe not even the best first step for some. You need to:

• Plan your estate,
• Write a will that sets out your estate plan,
• Set up the trusts, retirement vehicles and insurance plans required by your asset level and driven by your estate plan, and make necessary beneficiary designations,
• Create documents that set out who you can act for you and provide for your minor children when you cannot act for yourself,
• Transfer property in a timely fashion.

Attorneys in our estate planning practice

• John F. Boland
• Tiffany L. Burton
• William P. Daly, Jr.

Plan your estate-

Estate planning is a broad and complicated area. We perform estate-planning services for estates of all sizes and complexity.

Your estate plan may include financial, business, and personal factors. Our goal is to assist you to develop and implement your plan so that you preserve, use, and ultimately transfer assets to intended beneficiaries in the exact way you desire.

Your plan may include a variety of business agreements as well as the more familiar wills and trusts. We will use our experience on your behalf to prepare a complete and effective plan that will accomplish your personal and financial goals while minimizing estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes.

We will review your plan from time to time in the future and consult with you, if you wish, about potential changes in the plan that may be prudent as a result of changes in tax law or in the circumstances of your life.

An action as simple as buying a piece of property with another person can have a radically unexpected impact on where your assets end up upon your death.

Write a will-

A will enables you make a series of decisions that can:

• Divide your estate in any way you wish;
• Assign items with special meaning to the beneficiaries of your choice
• Provide for individuals who are not related by blood or marriage
• Choose the person (or institution) that you wish to have oversee your estate after you are gone
• Choose the appropriate guardians for your minor children
• Distribute of your estate to your beneficiaries at times, circumstances and ages you think are appropriate
• Save your heirs perhaps tens of thousands of dollars in fees by reducing the cost of administering your estate.

If you do not have a will, someone else will make all of these decisions for you. If you have an invalid will, that is the same as having no will at all. If you have a will that does not reflect your wishes, it may be worse than having no will at all.

Set up the trusts, retirement vehicles and insurance plans required by your asset level and driven by your estate plan-

Estate planning is one step in wealth management. We will help you select the right tools to execute your plan to accomplish your family goals and objectives. We are experienced in designing and preparing a wide variety of tools that may be appropriate to use for your plan, some of which are:

• Family Trusts
• Charitable Trusts
• Living Trusts
• Retirement plans
• Guardian arrangements
• Gifting strategies
• Instructions for carrying on a business
• Pre-marital or post-marital agreements

Create documents that establish who can act for you when you cannot act for yourself-

Part of your estate plan should be deciding who would act for you when you cannot act for yourself. Among the tools that can protect you when you are most vulnerable are:

Powers of attorney, to provide for financial affairs and care of minor children

Medical directives, to provide for medical care decision-making

Living wills, to declare your wishes in a terminal medical situation

Transfer property in a timely fashion

Your own desires as well as current tax law will determine how and when your assets are transferred to your heirs. The federal government as well as state and local governments have established tax laws that have an impact on your estate.

There is a limit to how much money you can transfer, tax free, in any year, over a lifetime and at your death. By taking full advantage of current tax law as part of your estate planning, you can accomplish your goals in regard to taxes.

Just as importantly, you can use trust law to control when assets pass to heirs, who controls those assets and how they are to be managed for your survivors.

With proper planning you can avoid the costs and headaches of probate and can keep your affairs private and free from public examination.

>Back to Practice Groups