Estate Planning

Wealth Advisors and Estate Planning

Published on: October 20, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Experienced estate planning attorneys can provide a wealth of information to individuals looking to make the most out of their estate plan. However, as with any other area of law requiring specialized knowledge, good estate planning attorneys are not afraid to tell their clients where to look for additional information pertinent to their individual circumstances. Sometimes that means working with an experienced wealth planner while working with an estate planning attorney to make the most out of your assets. A wealth advisor can play an integral role in your estate planning approach, and a recent article from Forbes highlights the important role they can play.

Role of a Wealth Advisor

A good wealth advisor will work with your estate planning attorney to help find the estate planning mechanisms that will best enable you to preserve your wealth and make it available to your heirs. When they work closely with your estate planning attorney, much of the burden of communicating important information is removed from clients. Instead, they can help you assess the estate planning mechanisms you have in place and look for ways that your wealth could best benefit from modifying or even expanding your estate planning portfolio based on your individual needs. This is especially helpful for families with diverse financial needs or large financial portfolios, but can also be a tool for anyone that wants to make the most out of their estate.

Important Reminders When Planning for Your Pets

Published on: October 18, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

For many people with animals, those furry friends are a part of the family. We make exceptions for them to make sure that they are taken care of while we are alive, and it is not uncommon for people to include provisions in their estate planning for pet care after a human companion passes away. Making sure your pets are taken care of after you pass is an important part of responsible pet ownership as well as an important part of comprehensive estate planning. However, a recent article from Fox News provides some reminders of traps to avoid when including your pets in your estate plan.

An Important Consideration

If you include provisions for your pet(s) in your estate plan, make sure they are realistic. A pet does not fit into everyone’s life, so when approaching estate planning for pets you first need to be confident that the person you nominate to care for your pet(s) is ready and able to accept the responsibility. This means that you will need to have a serious discussion with the person you are designating as the caretaker before you create provisions in your estate plan involving them. This important reminder extends to a number of different aspects beyond pets – and an experienced estate planning attorney can help you approach them correctly.

Tips for Sharing Your Estate Plan with Family

Published on: October 16, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

We try to provide readers with helpful tips and hints to make the estate planning process easier and more comprehensive regardless of an individual’s financial situation. Consistently, one of the most important aspects of successful and comprehensive estate planning is communication. While engaging in estate planning is an important step, making sure your loved ones and heirs understand your estate plan as well as the reasons for your decisions is a crucial component of making sure your estate plan is solid and will fulfill your wishes. Recently, Marketwatch.com featured an article that highlights some tips on you can approach talking about your estate plan with your family.

The Importance of Communication

Your loved ones and heirs are the most affected by your estate plan and the events that lead to it. If you spend the time, money, and energy involved in creating an estate plan that addresses your goals and the needs of your heirs then it only makes sense to communicate that to them.

Tips on Talking to Parents About Inheritances

Published on: October 14, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

As important as talking about estate planning is, almost nobody will tell you that doing so is easy. In fact, talking about estate planning is usually pretty difficult. We have written about many different approaches to talking to your heirs about your estate plan, but communication is an extremely important part of estate planning and works both ways. A recent article from The Week may help you find ways to approach talking to your parents about your inheritance. One of the most important things to remember is that even with a difficult topic like this, discussions about these things typically end on a good note. The following tips can help you strike the right chord when approaching estate planning with your parents.

Timing Is Key

The article points out that some individuals might be inclined to have discussions about serious family topics like inheritances during holiday visits. However, experts warn that it is important to remember that holidays are often already a stressful time for everyone and trying to have a serious discussion about something as important as estate planning might be rather difficult during these times. It could even end up striking the wrong tone and making any future discussions about the topic that much more difficult and unpleasant.

Preventing Undue Influence in a Will

Published on: October 5, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

A last will and testament is a very important document detailing the final wishes of a deceased person and New York probate courts give great deference to the language contained in a deceased individual’s decrees. One of the limited ways interested parties to an estate can challenge the directives contained in a last will and testament is to claim the deceased was not of sound mind and body at the time the document was executed, due to the undue influence of an individual attempting to take advantage of the situation and enrich himself or herself.

New York’s Surrogate Courts have very limited instances in which someone can contest the deceased’s wishes to disperse his or her property to the beneficiaries of the estate and asserting undue influence is often one of the most difficult to prove. The petitioner must prove to the court the testator somehow could not escape the influence of someone with a close, personal relationship to the deceased.

Additionally, the individual petitioning the court to invalidate the will must be an interested party, meaning he or she must have a legal claim to the deceased’s estate as a relative, usually a spouse or child. Under New York inheritance laws, spouses and children are typically granted a certain share or proportion of the estate and are therefore given standing to interject as an interested party.

Estate Planning and Prenuptial Agreements

Published on: October 2, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Once a tool for wealthy families to protect their assets when heirs got married, prenuptial agreements are now much more common in our society. Typically, such agreements cover property rights and other aspects of asset retention – but they can also set forth provisions for how each spouse will handle drafting their respective Wills. Since prenuptial agreements are increasingly more common today, it is important to understand how they could affect your estate plan. The following information can provide some insight into how prenuptial agreements might impact your estate planning goals.

Prenuptial Agreements and Priority

While you may think that your Last Will and Testament will take priority over other documents as long as it is executed in accordance with the law, that is not necessarily true. In fact, a prenuptial agreement is likely to take priority over your Will depending on the circumstances within the agreement and how it was drafted. Typically, the only way to avoid this would be for an individual to prove that a prenuptial agreement was signed under duress or that the agreement itself was designed in a way that encouraged divorce and exclusion from assets.

Potential Issues with Joint Bank Accounts

Published on: September 30, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

There are a number of reasons that people create joint bank accounts. Perhaps you and your spouse want to share a bank account to help simplify your marital finances. You may use joint bank accounts to help teach your children the importance of budgeting and financial planning. You may even need to have access to someone else’s bank account if they are incapacitated or cannot make purchases on their own. Whatever the reason for having a joint bank account, they are not without potential issues when it comes to your estate plan.

Vulnerability

Adding a person as an owner of a bank account inherently makes the account itself more vulnerable. In addition to the potential issues raised below, the more people you add as owners of a joint account the more likely you are to fall victim to theft – including identity theft. By adding individuals to the account, you will increase the risk of lost or stolen cards and/or checkbooks. Additionally, if the person you add to the account is not financially responsible, you risk losing the assets in that account because of poor financial planning.

Estate Planning and Identity Theft

Published on: September 28, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

In today’s day and age, identity theft is all too common a problem. In fact, the news is often filled with horror stories related to identity theft. Identity theft is a serious problem that can wreak havoc on your life, and it can also have a significant impact on your estate plan. The following information can help you start to understand the potential effects of identity theft on your estate plan.

Access to Private Information

Wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, and other estate planning documents contain very personal information. Not only do some documents have your social security number, but they could also contain other sensitive financial information, too. It is extremely important to safeguard these documents to prevent such information from slipping into the wrong hands. For instance, if someone were to gain access to this type of personal information they could potentially open up credit cards in the name of the deceased individual or even file a final tax return in their name before heirs have a chance to do so.

Recognizing a Fraudulent Will: Part One

Published on: September 21, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people in the world that will go to great lengths to take advantage of certain situations. This is true when it comes to a person’s Last Will and Testament. While you might never contemplate changing a person’s Will to suit your needs, that does not mean other individuals will not try. Unfortunately, this can sometimes include members of your own family. While there are a variety of steps an individual can take to cover their tracks if they have interfered in the Will of a deceased person, there are some common warning signs that might help you detect if a Will has been forged or not. The following information may provide you with some insight in what to look for.

Wills Not Signed in Presence of a Lawyer

If a Will was not signed in the presence of an experienced estate planning attorney, there is a good chance the Will could be fake. In fact, if the Will was not signed in the presence of the deceased person’s estate planning or family attorney but was signed in front of a different attorney with little or no relationship to the deceased, there could be foul play involved. Estate planning is often an intimate, complicated process. It is important for individuals to be comfortable with their estate planning attorney, and utilizing outside legal services – especially legal services that have a relationship with potential beneficiaries – could mean a Will is not proper.

Trusts Are More Accessible Than You Might Think

Published on: September 18, 2017 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Once a tool for extremely wealthy individuals, trusts have gained in popularity over recent decades. Changes in laws governing trusts and the development of new approaches to estate planning have made trusts an invaluable tool for many working class families to ensure they are able to provide financial security to their loved ones. A trust can help make sure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes in a variety of different ways, some of which are discussed below. An experienced estate planning attorney can review the various types of trusts that you may be eligible for and can help you determine the right type and structure to achieve your estate planning goals.

Trusts Can Avoid Probate

The majority of trusts are established during a person’s lifetime, and these trusts will be eligible to avoid the probate process. While the New York probate process is less difficult than the probate process in other states, it can still be time-consuming and costly. Trusts are an effective way to allow loved ones to access the assets you wish to distribute to them without waiting for the probate process to be complete. Ultimately, this saves you time and money in addition to keeping assets within the trust out of the public record associated with the probate process.