Four Reasons Why Estate Planning Is So Essential for Business Owners

If you are running a business, it’s easy to give estate planning less priority than your other business matters. After all, if you’re facing challenges meeting next month’s payroll or your goals for growth over the coming quarter, concerns over your potential incapacity or death can seem far less urgent.

But the reality is considering what would happen to your business in the event of your incapacity or when you die is one of your most pressing responsibilities as a business owner. Although estate planning and business planning may seem like two separate tasks, they’re actually inexorably linked. And given that your business is likely your family’s most valuable asset, estate planning is crucial not only for your company’s continued success, but also for your loved one’s future well being.

Without a proper estate plan, your team, clients, and family could face dire consequences if something should happen to you. Yet these dangers can be fairly easily mitigated using a few basic estate planning strategies. To demonstrate why proper estate planning is so important for business owners, here are four issues your company and family are likely to encounter as a result of poor estate planning for a business owner, along with the corresponding estate planning solutions you can use to prevent and/or mitigate those issues.

What Your Last Will & Testament Will (and Will Not) Do - Part 2

Yesterday, in part one, we looked at the different things having a will in place allows you to do. Here, in part two, we detail all of the things that your will does not do, along with identifying the specific estate planning tools and strategies that you should have in place to make up for the potential blind spots that exist in an estate plan that consists of only a will.

If you have yet to create your will, or you haven’t reviewed your existing will recently, contact our Personal Family Lawyer® to get this vital first step in your estate planning handled right away.

What Your Last Will & Testament Will (and Will Not) Do - Part 1

If you have already prepared your will, congratulations — too few Americans have taken this key first step in the estate planning process. In fact, only 33% of Americans have created their will, according to Caring.com’s 2022 Wills and Estate Planning Study.

Yet, while having a will is important — and all adults over age 18 should have this document in place — for all but a few people, creating a will is just one small part of an effective legal plan that works to keep your loved ones out of court and out of conflict. With this in mind, here we look at exactly what having a will in place will — and will not — do for you and your loved ones in terms of estate planning.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerApril 13, 2023Wills, Probate, Guardianships, Kids Protection Plan®

Three Simple Mistakes That Can Derail Your Estate Plan

While it might seem simple enough to put together a trust online or have your tax attorney prepare your will, it can be very difficult to create an estate plan that works without the proper training and experience. What might seem like minor details to the inexperienced eye can often have major effects on your plan’s final outcome.

More often than not, clients who meet with us to review a DIY plan find out that instead of saving money on their estate plan, they’ve actually cost themselves much more by buying a plan that has mistakes or does not take tax consequences into account. And if these mistakes or tax consequences aren’t caught by you while you’re alive and well, your loved ones will be the ones paying the price to resolve them after you’re gone.

Here are the three biggest mistakes we see when reviewing DIY and low-cost estate plans:

Five Ways DIY Estate Plans Can Fail & Leave Your Family at Risk — Part 2

Without a thorough understanding of your family dynamics, the nature of your assets, and how the legal process works upon your death or incapacity, you are likely to make serious mistakes when creating a DIY estate plan. Even worse, these mistakes won’t be discovered until it’s too late — and the loved ones you were trying to protect will be the very ones forced to clean up your mess or get stuck in a costly and traumatic court process that can drag out for years.

Yesterday, in part one of this series, we covered the first two ways DIY estate plans can fail, and here, we’ll cover the remaining three.

Five Ways DIY Estate Plans Can Fail & Leave Your Family At Risk - Part 1

Do a Google search for “digital wills” or “online estate planning,” and you’ll find dozens of different websites offering low-cost, do-it-yourself (DIY) and sometimes even free estate planning documents, such as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives.

From LegalZoom® and Rocket Lawyer® to TrustandWill.com and FreeWill.com, these DIY legal documents may seem like a cheap and easy way to finally cross estate planning off your to-do list — and do so without having to pay a lawyer big bucks to assist you. After all, you’ve been able to prepare and file your taxes online for years, is estate planning really that much different? And aren’t lawyers using the very same forms you find on these DIY document websites?

Estate PlanningStephen PennerApril 11, 2023DIY Estate Planning, Wills, Probate

Why Putting Your Family Home in a Trust is a Smart Move — Part 2

It’s a fundamentally important fact: proper estate planning is as much a part of responsible homeownership as having homeowners insurance. In part one, we explained how revocable living trusts and irrevocable trusts work, and we discussed the process of transferring the legal title of your home into a trust to ensure it’s properly funded. Here in part two, we will outline the key advantages of using a trust to pass your home to your loved ones compared to other estate planning strategies.

While both wills and trusts are the most commonly used estate planning vehicles to pass on wealth and other assets to your loved ones, putting your home in a trust has a number of distinct benefits compared to using a will.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerApril 10, 2023Real Property, Your Home, Trusts

Why Putting Your Family Home in a Trust is a Smart Move — Part 1

If you are like many homeowners, your home is likely your family’s most valuable and treasured asset. In light of this, you want to plan wisely to ensure your home will pass to your heirs in the most efficient and safe manner possible when you die or in the event you become incapacitated by illness or injury.

Indeed, proper estate planning is as much a part of responsible homeownership as having homeowners insurance or keeping your home’s roof well maintained. When it comes to including your home in your estate plan, you have a variety of different planning vehicles to choose from, but for a variety of different reasons, putting your home in a trust is often the smartest choice.

Although you should consult with our Personal Family Lawyer® to identify the best estate planning strategies for your particular circumstances, in this two-part series we’ll discuss how trusts work (both revocable and irrevocable), and then outline the most common advantages of using a trust to pass your home to your loved ones compared to other planning strategies.

Top 5 Questions To Consider Before Hiring A Lawyer For Your Estate Planning Needs

We know discussing topics like death, incapacity, and other potentially frightening life events, with someone like an estate planning lawyer may feel intimidating or even morbid. Take a deep breath and relax … it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t be that way.

Hiring a lawyer to help you make wise decisions for life and death can be the most empowering choice you ever make for yourself and your loved ones. The way we explain it to our friends and family is, “estate planning isn’t about planning for your death, it’s about planning for your life.” So, with that frame in mind, let’s talk about how to choose an estate planning attorney, because we aren’t all cut from the same cloth.

The right lawyer will be there for your family when you can’t be, so you want to understand who the lawyer is as a person, not just an attorney. Of course, you’ll also want to discover the services your lawyer offers and how they run their business.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerApril 6, 2023Lawyers, Law Firms, Personal Family Lawyer®

Three Critical Considerations For How to Save For Your Child's (or Grandchild's) College Education - Part 2

If you have started to save for your child or grandchild’s college education, it’s worth considering whether to use a 529 plan, an education savings account, or an irrevocable education trust.

Yesterday, in part one of this series, we discussed 529 plans and education savings accounts, which are both popular options for saving for college education. One of the main reasons for their popularity is their tax-saving advantages. The money you contribute to a 529 account grows on a tax-deferred basis, and withdrawals are tax-free, provided they are used for qualified education expenses, such as tuition, room and board, and other education-related fees.

That said, one of the downsides of 529 plans is that they come with strict limits on how you can use the funds (for education-related expenses only), and they also have a limited range of options for how you can invest your funds, primarily in various mutual funds. For these reasons, 529 plans and ESAs aren’t always the best fit for some families looking to save for their loved ones’ education.

Estate PlanningStephen PennerApril 5, 2023Savings, Trusts, Education Trusts, Irrevocable Trusts, Taxes

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