4 Things You Must Know About Estate Planning

Like a stitch in time saves nine, estate planning saves your family the stress of court cases and verbal exchange, before the sharing of your wealth and assets. The burden of losing a loved one is grievous enough; estate planning ensures peaceful executing of your will.

Estate planning involves planning for how an individual's assets will be preserved, managed, and distributed after death. It also takes into account, the management of an individual's properties and financial obligations in the event that s/he becomes incapacitated. This planning is usually executed at the hand of an estate planning attorney.

The whole essence of estate planning, while you are alive, is to safeguard your assets, protect you from the payment of unnecessary taxes. It also serves to protect your will and desires when you become incapacitated or dead. Below are four (4) things you must know about estate planning:

1. Age is no limit

Like it or not, you own an estate. An estate speaks of everything of value that you own. The ownership of valuables knows no limits neither does estate planning.

Once you begin to acquire assets and wealth of any form, it is time to commence estate planning. No one ever knows when they would die, it could happen any day. You don't want your efforts counting for waste.

Never sell or buy that 'I am too young to start estate planning'. Every legal adult should have some form of estate planning. Be on the save side, do the stitch now and save nine.

2. You need an estate planning attorney

The entire process of planning your estate cuts across several legal-based issues; hence the place of an estate planning attorney is both needed and necessary. Assets management matters are best handled by professionals, much more when the possible transfer of such assets is in view.

An estate planning attorney has the responsibility to put down your wishes for incapacity and death in writing. It is his duty to fine-tune your thoughts and desires, turn them into legal jargons and basically provide legal support. It is the duty of your attorney to cover the end to end technicalities of such contract.

3. Planning helps you evade probate

As you would have already discovered, most of the benefits of estate planning are founded in law. It is the duty of your estate planning attorney to shield you from the hammer of the law.

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Probate is the process of authenticating a last will and testament of the deceased one. The court embarks on an exercise to verify all the assets of the deceased, pay off outstanding tax balances and shares the rest according to the last will. These probate laws vary from State to State. But with your estate planning in place, you have no worries, dead or alive.

4. Prevent feud

With estate planning, you can easily prevent foreseeable feud between your family members should you get incapacitated or wind up dead anytime. Disagreements over who gets what has led to serious family feud in the time past; with estate planning this can be avoided.

A properly executed estate planning can also help reduce tax feud with both the Federal and State Governments.

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Estate planning is not for the wealthy alone, it is for anyone who owns assets. Get yourself an estate planning attorney and save yourself the attendant stress of otherwise.