How to Keep Estate Affairs Private
By Barry Zimmer on March 13th, 2018 in Estate Planning
Cincinnati estate planning attorneys can provide you with insight into the tools that you can use in order to accomplish your estate planning goals. Many people have lots of goals for how they want to provide for their loved ones and leave a legacy. While your primary focus is likely on providing financially for the people and causes you care about, you may also have other secondary concerns as well. For example, you may be worried about your private information becoming public record and everyone being able to find out the details about your assets and about your family situation.
If you want to ensure that you are able to keep your most personal financial and familial details private, you should work with Cincinnati estate planning attorneys at Zimmer Law Firm to explore ways to transfer assets outside of the probate process. Our firm can assist you with creating a comprehensive plan to protect privacy and security and to ensure your assets are able to quietly and quickly transfer onto new owners. Give us a call today to find out more.
How to Keep Your Estate Affairs Private
If keeping your estate affairs private is a primary goal for you, the problem that you face is the probate process. In most cases, when assets transfer after death, those assets must transfer through the probate process. This process requires going to court, so the details about probate proceedings become court record and members of the public can typically become aware of the proceedings.
If you want to avoid having your financial situation and details about the transfer of your assets become public record, you will need to take steps to transfer assets outside of the probate process. This means that you will need to make effective use of various types of legal tools that facilitate the transfer of assets through other means.
There are a variety of different options for facilitating the transfer of wealth outside of the probate process. One of your best options, for example, is to create a living trust while you are still alive and to transfer assets into the trust. When you have created a living trust, all of the assets that you transfer into it will be able to pass through the trust administration process instead of having to transfer through the probate process. Transferring assets through trust administration means that the court does not have to become involved unless some type of problem arises.
The trust administrator can take care of the process of facilitating the asset transfer privately and in a much more timely manner than the probate process. Your heirs or beneficiaries will inherit more quickly and there will be no court record of the assets in the trust or of who your wealth transferred to so you will be able to maintain your privacy.
You can also make inter vivos gifts during the course of your lifetime and will not owe taxes as long as you keep those gifts below the federal gift tax threshold. Using tools such as pay-on-death accounts and joint ownership with rights of survivorship can also help you to facilitate a transfer of assets that takes place outside of probate. If you create a pay on death account, the account assets can transfer automatically to the designated beneficiary upon your death without having to pass through probate first. If you own property jointly with someone else and the co-owner has rights of survivorship, then the co-owner will also inherit the property automatically and your ownership interest in the property can transfer seamlessly to the co-owner without the probate court process taking place first.
These are just some of many tools that you could use to facilitate the transfer of wealth outside of probate. If you work with Zimmer Law Firm, you can find the right approach for you to transfer your assets to loved ones privately so you won’t have to worry about your estate affairs becoming court record.
Getting Help from Cincinnati Estate Planning Attorneys
Zimmer Law Firm can help you to address all of your goals for leaving a legacy and providing for your family, whether privacy is a paramount issue for you or you have other concerns such as being able to avoid taxes or transfer assets as quickly as possible. To find out about some of the many ways our Cincinnati estate planning attorneys can help you, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at 513-721-1513 at any time to get personalized advice.