Mistakes When Creating An Estate Plan

An estate plan allows individuals to plan for the future while they still can. It may help your loved ones avoid having to pay a hefty tax on your assets.

Unfortunately, many will tend to make a number of errors while crafting their plan as they may not be aware of a certain estate law.

As you age, you place yourself and your family at a greater risk of running into financial issues in the future. In the event that you are unfortunately incapacitated or killed during an accident, your estate plan will revert to what state you are in has within its law books. That means that even if your family brings in an attorney, the estate law used will be that of the state.

Not Updating An Estate Plan

Speak to any lawyer, and they will tell you that a person needs to update their estate plan every few years. This is because life changes, especially if you’ve written your plan while you were young. Issues such as relationships falling apart, new assets coming into the picture, and the addition of children are just a few of the reasons for updating your estate plan.

Only Planning For Death

When people think of an estate plan, they usually connect it with a last will and testament. Although it certainly can function like that, an estate plan is also meant to be created in the event that you are no longer able to handle your own affairs. Dementia, paralysis, or illness are just a few of the things that could happen during your lifetime.

Not Using An Attorney

When people don’t have millions in their bank account, it can make them think that they don’t need a lawyer to help them craft their estate plan. The fact is that it is necessary that you will need legal advice from a lawyer to help you deal with the various law and tax issues surrounding estate planning. Failure to get tax information correct can lead to having your family members pay hefty taxes in the future.

Too Little Information

There have been horror stories where children of parents who passed away believed they were going to inherit a vast amount of money only to find out they had a number of debts. These kinds of issues can arise, but only if you fail to provide enough information within your estate plan.

As you can see from the information above, there are a number of mistakes that can easily be made by an individual. Therefore, it is recommended to bring in an experienced attorney to guide you through your estate planning process.

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