Estate Planning makes a key difference in death, disability, ill health, or other difficult times. While providing peace of mind for your, estate planning truly is the ultimate gift for your loved ones!
We also want to avoid courts and expenses for the family by avoiding guardianship or incapacity proceedings, probate, and all lengthy proceedings so that they wing up with a very smooth procedure and a very trouble-free process if something happens to them or their family.
First, estate planning is not simply about what happens to your money after you die. “Who gets my stuff?” “Who is my executor?” This is the traditional, but sorely limited scope of estate planning. While these are good questions, estate planning is a great deal more than that.
Modern estate planning with a testamentary trust can add another crucial element: protection of your loved-ones from future legal problems and financial attacks. All of this is sometimes referred to, generically, as “asset protection.” You can safeguard your assets from creditors, predators, divorce and bankruptcy after you are gone. Your spouse, children, and other loved ones (even your pets!) can receive a gift of your inheritance, but also have the benefit of rock-solid protection over that inheritance from bad people and bad times.
In the same vein, estate planning can minimize or legally avoid taxes on your loved ones. Sourcing a testamentary trust may protect your spouse and children from draconian Medicaid seizures. It can preserve college tuition money for your grandchildren, with greater protection and yet greater flexibility than most commonly held financial accounts and products.
Instead of leaving all assets to your loved spouse, you may wish to include a special trust in a Will for a spouse.
There is a common misconception that only those with a significantly large estate need estate planning. In fact, you or a 8 year old child could be worth zero and still need some healthcare and funeral documents, and a basic power of attorney for finances.
People who are not familiar with the estate planning process might assume that they have to have wealth in order for it to mean something. An insider knows that net worth is only scratching the surface. The real emphasis is what we do for all of those other contingencies and circumstances, which do not have to do with death but rather have to do with your health, mental health, and your ability to have people help you with whatever you may have. You need tools to all others to help you.
You need someone who’s authorized to decide which assisted living or nursing home you go to because if we don’t have proper documentation in place, even a spouse might wind up in a guardianship proceeding in court, in order to be allowed to make those decisions. In New Jersey another common misconception is that if you’re married your spouse will automatically have the ability to sell the house or make healthcare decisions. This is completely false. Even if you’re married, you must have some basic estate planning documents in place.
When filling in the blanks online, a lot of important questions aren’t going to be asked. Is this a blended family? Is this a traditional family? Sometimes, even in a traditional family, there’s a very strong need to make sure that your share of the estate won’t wind up in the hands of a new spouse if you die and your spouse gets remarried. We have to look at the relationship between the children and their parents, and each other. We have to look at all of these different components when deciding what an appropriate structure is for an individual or a family. Are there individuals with special needs or who might have special needs in the future? What is the makeup of the assets? Do you own real estate? Do you have a retirement plan? Are there charitable inclinations?
In the case of a blended family, a one-size-fits-all will would not take into account that you have a second-marriage and children from each of the prior relationships. That form has no provision that would assist in that type of family dynamic. You’re going to have potential rivalries and disputes, and planning ahead is how you get around those. If you create a Will online, you’ll have a false sense of security. You’ll think it’s all taken care of, but it’s not. The Surrogate courts recommends against cheap online documents.
In most situations, most of the assets in the estate are going to transfer through direct beneficiary designations or through joint ownership to the surviving spouse. The will probably won’t even come into play with a spouse. Then, the surviving spouse owns everything. Statistics consistently show that within about 25 months of a wife’s death, a husband is often already remarried. If you are an eligible bachelor over the age of 70, who can drive at night ( this addition was wisely included by one of our clients who is a widow), then you may be a very eligible bachelor because women tend to outlive men in such great numbers!
Sometimes one spouse dies and the surviving spouse gets remarried. Over the years, that new spouse is going to become the beneficiary of retirement plans and life insurance policies, and the joint owner of the home and investments. Then, the spouse who remarried dies. Everything goes to that new spouse and he or she can completely disinherit your children. People who aren’t familiar with this process assume that there’s a one-size-fits-all template when the specific components are actually critical to making the right choices.
One story is about a gentleman who wanted to probate his parents’ estate. He called them his parents, but it was a blended family. His dad had married his stepmom 25 years ago. His dad had three children and she had two children. His dad passed away with no planning. They were depending on the default provisions of state law. The couple had told all of their children that they wanted them to share everything equally when they were gone. When the husband died, by default provisions of State law, 100% of the estate went to her two children. His children wound up with nothing. Don’t ever depend on the default provisions of the law because there’s a very good chance that those default provisions won’t result in what you intended. | 
