Protect your wealth and your family. We can help you prepare the necessary documents to insure your wishes are met.
To us, estate planning should never be about just filling in the blanks on a pre-generated form. You work your entire life for the wealth you have accumulated, and you need to protect it by avoiding a longer than necessary probate process, lack of control of your assets, or any unnecessary exposure regarding estate taxes.
We will listen to your wishes and concerns and draft a plan that incorporates your desires while considering your assets and making recommendations that are appropriate. If your plan involves a Trust, we will coach you on how to “Fund a Trust”. Trust funding is often an overlooked area by estate planning attorneys and often the critical importance is not emphasized enough. If a newly created trust is not funded correctly and assets are not connected to the trust, the assets are not governed by the trust terms which could result in estate tax exposure or having to file probate. Simply put, the lack of trust funding would defeat the purpose of the trust.
There are several types of documents that we use as tools to work in unison to create a multi-layered approach to estate planning. These methods will often include one or more of the following documents:
Will — Allows you to stipulate who shall inherit your estate after your death and what will happen to your assets upon your demise.
Realty Trust — Specific trust created to hold deed and title to your real estate allowing continuity of ownership and continued control over the real property.
Revocable Living Trust — A trust that allows you to retain legal control while holding all assets that assist with attempting avoiding probate at death or prevents the court from controlling your assets at an incapacity. This type of trust offers the most protection, control, flexibility and continuity for you and future beneficiaries.
Irrevocable Trust — A trust with little flexibility and mostly utilized for elder law planning. Once an asset is placed in an irrevocable trust then the asset can never be removed from the trust. As a beneficiary of the trust, you must give up legal control as a beneficiary is not allowed to give direction to the trustee. Beneficiaries are only entitled to the income the trust generates and not the principal. This is an advanced strategy that is rigid and offers little to no flexibility but is a successful tool for the right set of circumstances.
Durable Power of Attorney — Appoints a specific person to manage your personal and financial affairs in the event you are unavailable. This document cannot be used once an individual passes.
Health Care Proxy & Living Will — Appoints and authorizes a specific person to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event you are incapacitated or unable including making end-of-life decisions.
COMMON ESTATE PLANNING TERMSSeveral terms frequently are used in wills. Although they may seem like “legalese”, they are used since their meanings are clear.
Issue means not only a person’s children, but also any grandchildren and great grandchildren (i.e., all of the person’s direct descendants). Legally adopted children and grandchildren are included unless the will expressly excludes them.
Per stirpes describes the way a bequest is to be divided among a person’s issue. Most people want bequests to their children to be divided equally among the children. A per stirpes distribution does this, and it also governs what happens if any child has died. If a child has died, his (or her) share is divided among his issue if he has any issue. For example, presume that you have three children (Sue, Sally, and John) and that your will provides for a bequest to your children per stirpes. If all three children survive you, each would get one third of the property. If, however, John has died, his one third share would be divided among his children if he had any, or if he had no living issue his one third share would pass to Sue and Sally.
Lapse means that a bequest is to be ignored if the beneficiary is not alive when the bequest is to take effect.
Personal representative refers to the person who is to probate your will, file tax returns, make any discretionary decisions, and oversees the paperwork for your estate.
Highly recommend Champagne & Marchand, P.C. for your estate planning needs. We worked with Alicia Champagne, Esq. and she was amazing! She thoroughly explained the process of creating our family trust and assisted every step of the way. Alicia’s response time and efficiency was incredible! Thank you for making this mission on our to do list, happen in record time!
JENNIFER GWe used Champagne & Marchand, P.C. to assist me and my husband in creating a will and trust and they were fantastic to work with! Alicia was great at answering all of my questions and was very responsive. The official signing of all of the documents was seamless and easy and she explained what everything was that we were signing. I would definitely recommend them to folks!
RITA SCALFANI