Estate Plans That Fit
By Barry Zimmer on July 21st, 2012 in Estate Planning
Everyone has old clothes in their closets, those things that you haven’t worn forever. Maybe you stopped wearing them because they went out of style. Maybe you just forgot about a piece of clothing and forgot that it was still hanging in the closet. You will find many articles of old clothing if you clean out the closet. Try some of them on. Do they fit? They probably either don’t fit or they aren’t as comfortable as they used to be.
You might be wondering why you are reading about old clothes on an estate planning blog. It’s simple. Old estate plans are like the forgotten clothes in your closet. If you made an estate plan years ago, it probably does not fit too well today. If you read it over, you may not be very comfortable with it.
Estate plans require attention. When your life circumstances change, you need to review and update your estate plan. You cannot just leave estate plans hanging in a closet and expect them to be just as good as they were when you first made them.
Sometimes estate old estate plans don’t fit any longer because laws have changed. This is especially true when it comes to estate tax law which has been volatile since 2001. IRA inheritance planning is another critical area that has seen change and is very prone to costly errors.
Estate planning lawyers continue to develop new ideas and techniques to help people reach their goals — and define new possibilities that older thinking did not envision let alone accomplish.
Take a look at your old estate plan, then call an attorney and see about getting it updated so that it fits. Even if in your view “nothing has changed”. Sometimes it takes a trained eye to see the change and know what to do about it.