Who’s on Your Estate Planning Team?
If you haven’t been keeping up with My Two Cents, we’ve been talking about estate planning recently. To catch yourself up, you can read more about digital estate planning and what to include in your estate plan. Almost as important as having a comprehensive plan for your estate is selecting advisors.
Building Your Team
Be sure to have an accountant among your advisors so that he or she can discuss the tax implications of your estate plan. Wealth managers or financial planners should also be included in your discussion. Finally, while you don’t have to meet with an attorney to begin estate planning, you will eventually need one to draft documents. When selecting your advisors, ask questions. In an initial meeting with any advisor—whether or not it’s for your estate plan—the goal is to find out if the relationship will be a good fit. If you’re price-sensitive, it’s okay to talk about fees but keep in mind that your budget shouldn’t outweigh the feeling of trust and confidence that comes when you have a skilled advisor.
Meeting about Your Estate Plan
When you meet with your estate planning team, you’ll want to cover topics discussed in my two previous posts. If you haven’t already met with advisors, the following is a list of things that you should know or ask about when meeting with your estate planning team.
What is the size of your estate? For an initial appointment, you don’t necessarily need to provide account statements or verification of the assets. However, it’s always helpful to have an estimate of your net worth—which means both your property and your debt needs to be shared with your advisors.
How the taxes should be paid. Depending on the size of your estate, most estate tax is related to your final income tax return. Oftentimes, there are ways to have the estate pay all of these taxes, but it’s important for your advisors to know the plan so they can write it according to your wishes.
How you’d like to distribute your assets? While you want to distribute cash and investments to your heirs—usually by assigning percentages—you don’t have to limit this discussion to how these are divided. If you aren’t sure about dividing your possessions, or if you think you might change your list assigning them to your heirs, discuss this with your advisors too.
Finally, remember that even if you have an estate plan in place, you should regularly review it with your advisors. Things like retirement, children growing up, or other changes in your family’s situation can impact your estate plan. Just like going to the doctor for a check-up, having your estate plan reviewed once a year is a good practice. If it’s been a while since you last updated your estate plan, contact one of DeLeon & Stang’s professionals today.