Estate Planning & Wills
Estate Planning
Wills and trusts are just two of several instruments used in estate planning to arrange for the future of you and your family. No matter the size or status of your estate (what you own), it is always advantageous to plan for your future to ensure that what is important to you is protected. Let the attorneys at Dart & Wise help you with your estate planning needs.
Estate planning is the process of arranging for what will happen to your property when you die. Whatever you own at your death is called your estate. A basic estate plan in Utah will usually consist of several documents such as a revocable trust, a pour-over will, a general assignment of assets to the revocable trust, a financial power of attorney, and a health care directive.
Estate planning often includes:
making arrangements for the care of your young children in the event of your death;
planning for your own care in case someday you can’t make decisions on your own;
taking steps so that your inheritors can avoid probate court proceedings after your death; and
if you own a large amount of property, planning to avoid federal or state estate tax.
Wills
Perhaps the most essential reason to make an estate plan is to have a say about who gets your property when you die. A Will is the easiest way to do this. If you don’t use a Will or some other legal method to transfer your property when you die, state law determines what happens to your possessions.
A Will, however, is not the only way, nor is it always the best way, to transfer ownership of your property when you die. A Trust, for example, is something to consider if you are further along in life and own a fair amount of property. You should consider whether it makes sense to plan now to help your inheritors avoid time-consuming and expensive probate court proceedings after your death. If you have a very large estate, you may also have to think about avoiding federal or state estate tax.
You may have heard or read that you ought to avoid probate and that if you don’t take steps to do so, your survivors will waste a lot of time and money after your death. You may be wondering what probate is. Put simply, probate is the legal process that includes filing a deceased person’s will with a court, locating and gathering assets, paying debts and taxes and eventually distributing what’s left as the Will directs. If there is no Will and no probate avoidance devices are used, property is distributed according to Utah’s intestate succession law and it still goes through probate. Fortunately, there are many estate planning devices you can use to keep property out of probate, including Revocable Living Trusts, Joint Tenancy, Pay-On-Death beneficiary designations, and others. Property transferred by any of these methods can be given directly to the people you’ve intended it to go to at your death with no court proceedings required.
At the very least, a person with minor children should have a simple Will that nominates guardians for the children in the event the person dies while the children are still minors. No matter the size or status of your estate, it is always advantageous to plan for your future to ensure that what is important to you is protected.
Call Dart & Wise today at (435) 637-7011 to explore your estate planning needs.