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If you’ve spent years working hard and planning how to financially protect your family in the long run, you need an estate plan that can carry out your wishes when you’re no longer here. Depending on the estate planning options you choose, your estate plan can seamlessly pass your assets to your loved ones, avoid probate, minimize estate taxes, and more.
A skilled estate planning attorney can tailor your plan to your legal needs and long-term goals, so you should contact Bratton Law Group to get started on the estate planning process. Our team is knowledgeable about wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and other popular estate planning options. If you want to learn what to include in your estate plan or need help updating your existing will or other legal documents, call our New Jersey law firm for an initial consultation with our caring attorneys.
How Can an Estate Plan Protect You and Your Family?
Estate plans have a wide array of benefits that can protect individuals of any age, so you and your family can reap the rewards of certain estate planning tools from birth to death. In fact, a trusted lawyer might recommend different legal options for every potential life event, including incapacity, financial issues, and unexpected death.
If you or your family experience any of these struggles, you’ll be glad to have a comprehensive estate plan in place. That’s because this type of plan can do the following, depending on the specific estate planning tools it features:
- Specify who should inherit your hard-earned assets
- Name someone you can rely on to manage your estate after your death
- Reduce your estate or inheritance tax liability
- Protect your assets from creditors and other threats
- Transfer business ownership to competent employees or relatives
- Appoint a trusted guardian to care for your minor children
- Avoid any delays in the distribution of assets to the family
- Communicate your wishes regarding your healthcare
If you’re interested in these benefits of planning your estate, you should call our law firm to speak with a New Jersey estate planning attorney. We’ve practiced law for years, drawing on our deep understanding of estate law, probate law, tax law, elder law, and other practice areas to serve clients throughout the state. When you reach out for proper estate planning assistance, you can expect us to carefully consider your circumstances and goals for the future before recommending the right legal elements for your estate plan.
What Should a Comprehensive Estate Plan Include?
As you plan for the future, you can choose from a variety of legal tools that will protect your assets, family, business, and health. Your attorney will explain all options and then prepare the documents that best meet your specific needs.
Some of the most common estate planning tools that might appeal to you include:
- Last will and testament: This is among the most basic documents to include in your plan, as it allows you to clarify who should inherit which assets of yours. It also allows you to appoint someone to manage your estate or raise your minor children, ensuring these important roles aren’t simply appointed by a judge if you pass away without a will.
- Durable power of attorney: You have the right to appoint someone you trust to handle your legal or financial affairs if you’re incapacitated and cannot do so yourself. The person you select can pay your bills, sign legal documents, initiate real estate transactions on your behalf, and more, depending on the scope of authority you decide on when making a power of attorney.
- Revocable living trust: If you want to maintain control over your assets during your lifetime before transferring them to your family members, a living trust may be right for you. This makes it easier to distribute your assets to your loved ones upon death since a living trust avoids probate, but it allows you to add or remove assets as needed.
- Irrevocable trust: This type of trust is less flexible than a revocable living trust, since you cannot change or revoke it on your own. Its benefits can make up for this, as they include better asset protection, tax planning, and long-term care planning options when you’re not serving as the trustee.
- Living will: This document allows you to clarify the type of medical care you do and don’t want if you’re incapacitated. It also lets you appoint someone to make decisions regarding your healthcare when you cannot communicate clearly with doctors.
- Beneficiary designations: Some assets can pass to named beneficiaries without going through probate. These include life insurance policies, retirement accounts, and transfer-on-death or payable-on-death bank accounts.
When you hire our New Jersey law firm for estate planning services, we’ll find the most effective ways of protecting assets and family members on your behalf. We have years of experience providing clients with sound advice on estate litigation, elder law, business succession planning, probate litigation, and other legal matters. Call our firm for trust and estate counsel when you’re ready to plan your family’s future in New Jersey.
Do You Need Estate Planning Services If You Already Have a Will?
If you wrote a will years ago, you might wonder if you should consider additional estate planning tools. In most cases, the answer is yes. While wills help explain who should manage your estate, care for minor children, or inherit each asset when you pass away, they have certain limitations on what they can do.
In particular, wills only take effect after your death, so they cannot benefit you or your family during your lifetime like a trust could. In addition, wills can’t avoid probate like trusts and designated beneficiaries can. This means that anything you leave to your loved ones in a will cannot be fully distributed to them for several months or more.
Another reason to include more than a will in your estate plan is to minimize taxes, protect valuable property from creditors, and control the timing of asset distributions. If these benefits of other estate planning options interest you, it’s time to speak with a New Jersey attorney at our firm.
Why Should You Hire an Estate Planning Attorney in New Jersey?
Having an attorney by your side who has extensive experience with estate planning, estate administration, trust administration, and other practice areas can make all the difference in your case. At Bratton Law Group, we’re proud to provide strategic planning services to New Jersey clients hoping to protect their family’s future.
When you seek legal representation from our team, we’ll answer any questions you have about estate planning, estate administration, elder law concerns, and other legal matters that could affect your loved ones and your estate as a whole. Call (856) 644-4283 to schedule an initial consultation with our New Jersey legal team.