When you think about estate planning, the first thing that comes to mind might be a will, a trust, or deciding who gets what. Those decisions matter, but some of the smaller details can have a surprisingly big impact on what your loved ones experience later. Thinking through these details now can help make an already difficult time a little easier for your family.
Start with What You Want to Accomplish
You don't need to walk into an estate planning attorney's office knowing exactly which documents or strategies you need. But it can help to understand what you have now and what you'd like to happen in the future. Maybe you want your spouse to easily access certain assets, or you want your children to inherit at specific ages. It’s also important to be open about your finances and family circumstances. Even details that seem unimportant or uncomfortable to discuss can affect how well your plan works.
Make It Easier for Loved Ones to Access Assets
Financial institutions generally want to be certain that they're giving money to the right person after an account holder dies. That can mean a lot of paperwork, internal procedures, and delays. Planning ahead for how certain assets will transfer may help reduce some of that red tape. Taking care of those decisions now can mean one less thing for a loved one to navigate while grieving.
Choose the Right Person for Each Role
It's easy to choose an executor, trustee, or other decision-maker based on family tradition or assumptions about who should do it. Instead, consider each person's abilities, availability, financial experience, and willingness to take on the job. And remember that the best choice can change over time. Someone who wasn't ready for the responsibility ten years ago may be perfectly capable of handling it today.
Be Careful About Making Everything a Group Decision
Parents sometimes want to name all of their children to a certain role because it feels fair. But in practice, that can make simple decisions surprisingly complicated. Imagine naming four children as trustees. If all four must approve transactions, even a relatively small distribution could require four people to coordinate, complete paperwork, and provide signatures. Giving everyone the same role isn't necessarily the simplest way to treat everyone fairly. Thinking through how those decisions will work in practice can help prevent headaches later.
Revisit Your Estate Plan as Life Changes
As a general rule of thumb, we recommend reviewing an estate plan every five to ten years, as well as when major life changes occur. Children grow up, family relationships change, finances evolve, and the people you've named for important responsibilities may no longer be the best choices. Estate planning works best when the plan reflects the life you're actually living today.
Think Through the Details with CPMT
A good estate plan should make sense both on paper and in practice. If it's been a while since you've reviewed your plan or you're ready to create one for the first time, our attorneys at CPMT can help you think through your goals and build a plan designed to work for you and the people you care about. Contact us today to set up a consultation.