Life Happens
Setting up an estate plan, getting documents in order, and making your wishes known feels like an overwhelming undertaking. Once complete, we like to take a deep breath, check it off the to do list and consider it done. However, unlike the old appliance infomercial, your estate plan is not really a "set it and forget it" thing. It's important to revisit your plan periodically and make sure it continues to represent your wishes.
Life happens...every day. Keeping your plan aligned as your life evolves is important. Have you looked at your documents lately?
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Check Your Beneficiary Designations --
Real Life Horror Stories
Regardless of your income or net worth, there's one estate planning move you should probably make right now: Check the beneficiary designations for your life insurance policies, bank accounts, brokerage firm accounts, retirement accounts, and other assets. If you've not yet turned in the proper forms to designate beneficiaries, do it now. If your forms are out of date, update them.
The consequences of failing to take these simple steps can be serious. If you don't believe it, consider the following trifecta of real-life horror stories.
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Beneficiary Review Checklist
Life insurance policies, annuities, IRAs, and other tax-favored retirement accounts and employer-sponsored benefit plans. Fill out and turn in beneficiary designation forms to establish or change beneficiaries.
Secondary Beneficiaries. For all types of assets, naming a primary beneficiary isn't enough. Name one or more secondary (contingent) beneficiaries to inherit your money if the primary beneficiary dies before you do. Sadly, this is a common occurrence that must be taken into account.
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How to Make Changes to Your Estate Plan
As life circumstances change (births, marriages, divorces, and deaths), it may become necessary to make changes to your will or trust. If an estate plan is not kept up-to-date, it can become useless. The best way to make changes is either through a codicil -- an amendment to the will --, a trust amendment or by creating a new will or trust.
While it may be tempting to just take out a pen and make changes by hand, this is not recommended. Changes will not be effective unless you use the same formalities as you did when signing the original document.
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The Most Important Part of Estate Planning
Can't Get Legislated Away
There is always a media swarm around the death of a celebrity, especially when they're young, active in their careers, beloved, and tragic. The death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in early February is no exception. Hoffman was an incredibly talented actor who appeared to be in the prime of his career. But that career was cut short by a history of depression and substance abuse.
Most often, articles about the estate plans of dead celebrities focus on the legal challenges they raise or the amount of estate tax that could have otherwise been avoided. Many of the articles about Hoffman's death -- and Sopranos star James Gandolfini before him -- bear this out. But recently an article surfaced about Philip Seymour Hoffman's estate plan that caught my eye.
(read more)
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 Is It Time to Take Action?
Contact us and find out how easy it is to set your estate plan up. You'll sleep better at night knowing things are taken care of the way you want.
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Welcome!
Elizabeth Schmitz practices estate planning, probate and elder law. She guides families and individuals as they provide for themselves and their loved ones during all states of life.
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