Does Your Estate Planning Legacy Reflect What You Want in 2020?

For many of us our estate plans are deeply personal and we want them to reflect your estate planning legacy. We know who we care about, why we care about them, and what we feel they need from us both now and in the future. This includes a future that we may not be able to be present for. Life does happen, and this means that we may one day in the future be unable to care for our loved ones as we do now due to our own incapacity or death.

Unfortunately, none of us will live forever. Although we may want to, and have every intention to, we need to prepare in advance for a time when we are no longer here. Without pre-planning, we leave our most important decisions to chance. This means that we will not be prepared for any possible outcomes the future holds and your estate planning legacy may not be reflected.

This can be a difficult topic to think about at any time, but we would encourage you to read the following and consider your future planning in three distinct ways.

1. Financial Decision Making. You need the right person making your financial decisions in the event of your incapacity or death. Often, we find our clients want to simply choose the “oldest” child to be in this role but we encourage you to consider other important factors as well. For example, does one of your children have special knowledge of investing or banking? Is one child more easy to reach than another? These can be critical considerations when choosing a financial decision maker.

2. Health Care Decision Making.  Similarly, you need to consider who is best suited to make your health care decisions. It is not only about choosing the right person. It is also about choosing the right health care documents with your estate planning attorney to ensure that your chosen decision maker will have the legal authority he or she needs in a crisis to act.

3. Current Estate Planning. What you may not realize is that estate plans can change. This could be due to circumstances in your life, but also in the law as well. It is important to check in annually with your estate planning attorney to ensure that the legacy you want to leave is still protected.

We want you to know that there is never a wrong time to plan forward. You need to take control of your life now, and throughout the year, to ensure you and those you care about most are always protected. Do not wait to get the answers to the questions you have from attorney Donna Wilson. You may reach out to our office at any time and schedule a meeting with her.