Summary: Estate plan reviews are an important part of maintaining a healthy estate plan. While, certainly, anyone can look over one’s plan and identify their fiduciaries and beneficiaries, and also pinpoint whether marriage, divorce, death or a new birth has affected any of those people’s lives, there is much more that goes into a truly comprehensive estate plan review. Whether it is reviewing non-probate assets or identifying changes in the law, there are many ways that, by going deeper, your estate plan review can give you total confidence that you plan is truly optimized.
Having a team of reliable estate
planning professionals can be very helpful to you in many ways. One of the
occasions where they can be invaluable to you is when you need to perform a
review of your estate plan. You can certainly perform a review on your own, but
your estate planning team can help you make sure that your review is a truly
complete one so that you don’t miss anything.
When you need to review your plan, you
may know, without any help, that you need to review your will, living trust,
powers of attorney and living will. But did you know that you shouldn’t stop
there? Many people have many assets held in various forms that involve
non-probate transfers on death. This could everything from a financial account
with a pay-on-death designation or a piece of real estate with a transfer-on-death
deed to your retirement account, life insurance or annuities… basically
anything with a death beneficiary attached to it. These assets are also part of
your estate plan and making sure to include these assets in your review can
help you make certain that everything reflects the current state of affairs in
your life and your up-to-date planning goals.
Also, you may possibly already know
that, as you review all of these assets, titles and documents, that you should
take into account certain life events like marriage, divorce, death or a new
birth in the family. But, did you know that there are other life events that
may impact your plan and create a possible estate planning need? Illnesses or
injuries can sometimes alter your loved ones’ needs, which may change your
estate planning goals. Perhaps you have a beneficiary who’s recently been
approved for Medicaid or some other needs-based benefits program. You need to
make sure that there are no distributions in your estate plan that, if you
died, would go directly to your beneficiary and cause her to lose continued
eligibility for those benefits.
As another example, let’s say you have a
trusted loved one whom you’ve selected as the successor trustee of your living
trust and the executor of your will. Let’s also assume, in this example, that
this loved one has been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The
effects of the disease may create a situation where you need to consider naming
someone else as the first person in line to handle these duties on your behalf
after you pass away.
Finally, there is also the possibility
that the laws (either federal law or your state’s law) may have changed since
you last reviewed your plan. Chances are, you’re aren’t up-to-date on all of
the most recent changes to the laws and what those changes’ effects are on
estate plan like yours (and, really, how could any busy layperson be expected
to be?) Your estate planning team can help you with identifying those laws that
may impact people who live where you do.
This article is published by the Legacy Assurance Plan and is intended for general informational purposes only. Some information may not apply to your situation. It does not, nor is it intended, to constitute legal advice. You should consult with an attorney regarding any specific questions about probate, living probate or other estate planning matters. Legacy Assurance Plan is an estate planning services-company and is not a lawyer or law firm and is not engaged in the practice of law. For more information about this and other estate planning matters visit our website at www.legacyassuranceplan.com.
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