3 Reasons You Need an Estate Plan
You are a busy person, and may be scheduled out for weeks at a time. If you are not at work, you are running children to and from practice and games. With so many overwhelming responsibilities between work and home, you do not have much free time in your day. However, you need to make time to build your estate plan. While not the most fun undertaking, it is one of the most essential for you and your family. Take a closer look at three reasons you need to make an appointment to get your plan together sooner rather than later.
1. You Get Your Wishes on Paper
You may have a close relationship with a niece, and you want her to inherit something specific upon your death. On the other hand, you may believe an adult sibling is responsible enough to handle everything. When you create an estate plan — more specifically, a will — you get to dictate where your belongings go when you die. You also get to designate people to take care of your children and become their guardians. If you die without these wishes expressed in a legal document, that irresponsible sibling may end up caring for your children.
2. You Save Your Family from Difficult Decisions
An estate plan includes more than just a will. It also includes other documents that are activated while you are alive. A medical directive or living will designate a person who takes control of making decisions for you in your time of need. This allows you to choose who makes these decisions. It may be your spouse, or perhaps a close friend. Regardless, having someone set to undertake often difficult undertakings takes the pressure off of others. You want to designate someone who will follow your wishes and then, when tasked with making their own, will know what is best for you.
3. You May Bypass Probate
Some estate planning tools do not go through the court after death. Deciding to prepare some of these helps your family and heirs get some of their inheritance faster. A popular avenue people take includes creating a trust or trusts to hold property and assets. Since a trust designates a beneficiary or grantee, it does not need to go through the court to disburse. The same process applies to life insurance and retirement accounts. These all go directly to the named beneficiaries upon your death, and therefore stay out of probate.
Your estate contains most of your livelihood. After so many years working to build it, letting it all go to chance is not ideal. Thus, planning for what you want to happen to it and your family after you die should become the top task on your list. Contact an estate planning lawyer, like an estate planning lawyer in Memphis, TN, to begin creating your estate plan today.
Thanks to Patterson Bray, for their insight into some reasons you need to have an estate plan.
