The REAL Reason to Plan Your Estate
August 19, 2010
We write often on our blog about specific pieces of the estate planning whole: elder law, retirement planning, estate administration, etc… But sometimes it’s important to pull back and look at the big picture—to remind ourselves why we’re doing all this in the first place. And the plain truth is that there is one main reason we do this: Love.
Now, “love” may sound sappy and sentimental, but when it comes down to it love truly is the only reason we would spend time and money thinking about the unpleasant subject of death, and planning for a time that we won’t be around to enjoy life with our loved ones.
Estate Planning Ensures Your Minor Children Have a Home
Part of creating your estate plan includes nominating guardians for your minor children. Without this nomination, your children are at the mercy of the court should anything happen to you. Estate planning also allows you to ensure that your minor children and their guardians have the financial security they need to make a smooth transition during a difficult time.
Estate Planning Preserves Sibling Relationships
There are fewer things more stressful to a family than the death of a beloved parent. And it is at this time more than any other that fights are liable to break out between normally loving siblings: Fights over what to do for mom’s funeral, over who gets treasured heirlooms, over who dad would have wanted to distribute the estate. All of these fights can be easily avoided by creating an estate plan that spells out your wishes in clear and loving terms.
Estate Planning Allows You to Provide for Your Children and Grandchildren
You spend a lifetime raising and caring for your children knowing that someday, when you’re gone, they’ll have to fend for themselves. Creating an estate plan allows you to leave a little bit behind, a cushion your children can hold in reserve in case of emergency. An estate plan allows you to continue providing for your children even after you’ve gone.
Estate Planning Leaves an Enduring Legacy
Estate planning is not just about finances and paperwork, it’s about relationships. Creating your estate plan allows you to brush away life’s minor details and minutia and focus on what’s really important, allowing you to connect with your loved ones in a more meaningful and lasting way than ever before. Your estate plan expresses your enduring values, leaving a legacy for your family that will live on for generations to come.
The Comfort That Comes With Planning Ahead
July 28, 2010
Everybody thinks it won’t happen to them. Or rather, everybody knows it’s going to happen to them eventually, but nobody thinks it’s going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. The “it” of which I speak is, of course, death. It is this perceived immortality that allows so many people to put off their estate planning until it is too late.
But today’s blog post is not a cautionary tale about a family who put off their planning and regretted it, today’s post is about the peace and relief that forethought and planning brings not just to your family, but to you as the person making the plan.
In this article in Market Watch Chuck Jaffe tells the moving story of his brother Rob, who insisted 2 years ago on creating an estate plan even though he and his wife were both healthy. As Jaffe puts it, “While not pleasant subject matter, it was not morbid… you’d rather be drinking lemonade on the veranda, but it wasn’t a sharp stick in the eye.” However, when Rob became unexpectedly ill in May of this year the estate plan turned out to be a comfort to Rob and his family—such a comfort, according to Jaffe, that Rob “made me [Chuck] promise that I would write about him… when his time was up, because his story would help others.”
“People need to understand… how big a blessing it is to know — when their time comes — that they have everything in order, that they don’t need to stress or worry about how things they worked their whole life for are going to turn out. … I would not want to waste a minute of my life now having to do estate planning or worrying that I live long enough to get documents filed or whatever garbage comes with it… Focusing on death and dying while you are living, that’s easy; having to focus on death when you are dying, that would be unimaginable.”
In our business we frequently see how much easier it is for people to create a plan when they’re healthy, as opposed to the stress that comes with creating a plan when they are sick. Thank you Mr. Jaffe for sharing your brother’s moving story. We hope that your (and your brother’s) words will help motivate others to take comfort in planning ahead.
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s… Heirloom?
July 20, 2010
Families have a way of acquiring great numbers of treasured objects and mementos: photo albums, antique books, Wedgewood China… a mounted deer head? You just never know what’s going to end up in the trash-heap and what will be kept and passed on to the next generation. Ellen Lupton mentions in her recent article in the New York Times that she and her husband kept the Wedgewood China and (surprisingly enough) the deer head. But the question she puts forth is… why?
Lupton’s article, entitled How to Lose a Legacy, makes the point that the difference between old stuff as trash and old stuff as treasure lies largely with you and how you choose to leave all this stuff to your heirs. “You can’t buy an heirloom at Pottery Barn or IKEA. It comes via gift, bequest or a heated sibling brawl.”
Lupton says early on in her article that “Even folks in the ‘die broke’ crowd, determined to enjoy their remaining assets rather than leave them to the ungrateful grandkids, may secretly hope the family will love and honor their dearest possessions.” But secret hopes aren’t of any use to your children or grandchildren after you’ve passed away. Part of the job of an estate planner is to help you express these secret hopes to your heirs and leave your treasured possessions in safe and appreciative hands.
Of course your heirs are going to have minds (and memories) of their own, and your treasured silver cake platter could still end up in the local antique store; but the best way to keep your treasures in the family is to make sure your family knows your wishes. If they know how much your grandmother’s English tea set meant to you (and why it meant so much to you) it’s going to mean that much more to them.
You may share a life and history with your heirs, but you can’t expect them to read your mind. If you can put your stuff into context—let each heirloom tell a part of your story and reflect a meaningful relationship—the legacy you leave will be priceless.
Going Beyond Legal Language with an Ethical Will
December 3, 2009
Estate and Legacy planning documents are often seen as difficult, and boring pieces of paper—which in some ways is exactly what they have to be in order to someday withstand tough legal scrutiny; but unless you’re an attorney who is practiced at reading the sentiment between the lines of dry legal jargon, these documents don’t make for sentimental family heirlooms. This is why some families and individuals are choosing to make (in addition to their legally binding estate planning documents) personal ethical wills to leave to their loved ones.
An ethical will can be anything from a letter to your children expressing your love and hope that they carry on your values, to a novella length memoir detailing your life experiences. But what about those people who don’t have the ability or inclination to articulate their thoughts in pen and ink? Well, more and more these people are turning to the camera and making their ethical wills on video.
A video will, as suggested by this article in the Wall Street Journal, is an unparalleled way to let the younger generation know about your feelings and values. “No matter how clear your memories of someone may be, if you have them on the screen in front of you, talking to you, there’s a qualitative difference.” And a video will, if made correctly in the presence of your estate planning attorney, might even have the added benefit of preventing disputes and bickering between your heirs later on.
What we like best about the idea of ethical or video wills is the personal touch. Although we work every day with the “dry and boring legal jargon”, we know that underneath all that an estate plan is about love and values—it’s about family. And an ethical or video will is a way to add a personal touch to the formal written Will or Trust, which is still necessary to meet legal requirements. So, consider doing both together to pass on, not only your assets, but also your values and hopes.
5 Goals Your Estate Plan Can Help You Achieve
September 16, 2009
What is your estate plan all about? Is it about saving your assets from estate tax, or is it about leaving an inheritance for your children? Or is it something even beyond that—providing for your own financial security during your life, thus enabling you to leave a lasting legacy for your family?
Estate planning—or what this article from Investors Insight likes to call “legacy planning” —can help you achieve all of these goals. The article outlines four goals an estate plan can help you achieve. In our firm, we add a fifth: Long Term Care Planning. You and our firm can work together to make your plan more than merely a tax savings tool, by addressing the following:
- Financial Security
- Estate Care and Management
- Protecting your Estate
- Minimizing the Tax Burden and Probate Expense, and
- Long Term Care Planning
Tax planning is sometimes an important part of your estate planning process, but tax laws have a tendency to change, and with a new estate tax law expected in 2009 or 2010 it is essential to remember your other goals as well when you plan your estate.
For many of our clients, planning to help fund the cost of Long Term Care without depleting the estate is a primary goal; if these costs are not considered, they can drain the estate you leave to your spouse or children. Our firm may be able to help minimize the impact of these costs by creating an estate plan that coordinates your wishes with available government long term care benefits. Pre-planning is the best approach.
What We Can Learn From the Kennedy Trusts
September 4, 2009
The recent death of Senator Ted Kennedy has given us an opportunity to reflect on the unique nature of trusts not only as a tool to protect assets for future generations, but also as a way to leave a lasting legacy for your children and grandchildren.
The Kennedy trust—or Kennedy trusts, we should say—are some of the best examples of how comprehensive and versatile trusts can be, as this article by Gerald Posner illustrates. The trusts were first established by Joe Kennedy; one in 1926, another in 1936, and another in 1949. Each trust had its own unique purpose: the trust established in 1926 was for Rose and the children, whereas the trust established in 1949 was intended for his grandchildren. Furthermore, each trust was set up as a blind trust, designed to act independently from any other trust.
The Kennedy trusts were built to last, with each successive trustee working to provide for the beneficiaries while protecting the principal for future generations as well. And last they have, to the extent that today—even taking the recent economic downturn into account—the trusts have survived… and even flourished in some cases.
You don’t have to be a Kennedy to leave a legacy for your children or grandchildren. The Kennedys certainly had a financial head start, but trusts can be designed to protect and build on even a modest estate. Whether your desire is to provide for your immediate heirs, or leave a legacy that lasts far into the future, a trust can help you accomplish your goal.
How Far Would You Go to Leave a Legacy for Your Children?
June 24, 2009
As an estate planning firm our job is to help people find the best way to leave an inheritance to their loved ones; but the inheritance you leave your children can end up making a huge statement about your core family values. When planning your estate it is important to ask not only “how?” to leave a legacy, but also “why?”
These are two questions that New York Times writer Stephen Amidon has spent a lot of time considering for his Op-Ed piece “My Children Made Me Do It”. Amidon begins pondering the “how?” by bringing up recent newsworthy subjects, namely Bernie Madoff and Tom Daschle, reminding us that any legacy these two leave will be far more than mere money—and not necessarily beneficial. A parent will do just about anything for his children, writes Amidon, “…the one thing that is sure to get me thinking I should do something I really do not want to do — or perhaps even something I should not do — is the desire to endow my brood. All manner of behavior that would otherwise be considered contemptible seems to be justified in the name of inheritance.” But will it have been worth it?
The answer to that question depends in great part on how you answer the question, “why?” Do you want to leave your children a Rockefeller fortune? Merely give them a little breathing room? Or perhaps you agree with Amidon that “there is often something not quite right about these fortunate sons of the baby boom…— there is something missing here, the sense of accomplishment derived from patient effort.” Thus your goal may be less about finances and more about values.
For most people the goal is actually far simpler, at least in the beginning—they want to have enough themselves to not be a burden on their children.
Whatever your goals, with enough thought and discussion your estate plan can reflect and achieve them. The first step is to ask yourself the important questions. “Why?” is a question for you alone, but “how?” is something our firm can help you with.
Jinies.com