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An Estate Planning Lawyer Can Save You Time and Money

Home Our Blog An Estate Planning Lawyer Can Save You Time and Money

By Barry Zimmer on August 25th, 2020 in Estate Planning

estate planning lawyerMost people would agree that time and money are two things that you do not want to spend foolishly, and it is a good idea to keep this in mind when you are planning your estate.

The most common way that people have traditionally passed their legacies on to their heirs after death is by leaving behind a will. This would seem like a pretty simple and straightforward practice that should enable the transfer of assets without incurring a lot of expense or taking an undue amount of time.

Unfortunately, due to the process of probate, this is not the case.

When you pass away with assets that are still in your name and use a will to state your wishes, the estate must pass through probate. The probate court would determine the validity of the will, and if any interested parties wanted to contest it, their arguments would be heard by the court.

As you might imagine, this can take a lot of time, and your heirs would not receive their inheritances until the probate court closed the estate. But even in cases when there is no one contesting anything, it will take eight months to a year.

And in addition to the time consumption, probate can be expensive, because there are court costs, attorney fees, executor fees, and possible accounting, appraisal, and liquidator fees.

Living Trusts

A commonly used estate planning vehicle that enables probate avoidance is the revocable living trust. The way that it works is you convey your assets into the trust, and you name yourself as the trustee and the beneficiary. As a result, you would still have complete control of your property.

In the trust declaration, you name a successor beneficiary or beneficiaries and a successor trustee. When you pass on, the assets in the trust would be distributed to your heirs directly without having to pass through probate. This would save your loved ones those two precious commodities: time and money.

Learn More About Estate Planning Topics

We provided a little bit of very good information in this brief blog post, and we urge you to bookmark our blog, because it is updated regularly. As valuable as it is, this is not the only resource that we offer on our website.

Our attorneys have prepared numerous special reports that dig deeply into many different aspects of the estate planning process. Though these reports are in-depth, there are very easy for the layperson to understand.

There is no charge at all for any of these reports, so this is a golden opportunity to build on your knowledge. To check out the titles, visit our library of special reports.

Attend an Upcoming Webinar!

Written information is very useful, and we are glad to be able to pass along a lot of it here on our website. Since education is so important to us, we have always taken this commitment to another level through our in-person seminars.

In the “new normal” we have all been forced to adapt to, we have simply converted the seminars into the webinar format. They are just as informative, and the convenience speaks for itself.

You can see the dates if you take a moment to visit our webinar schedule page. After you identify the session that works for you, click on it and follow the simple instructions to register.

 

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