Sun City Estate Planning Blog

Generally speaking, the more assets an individual has the more detailed his or her estate plan needs to be. The same holds true when there are multiple heirs in play. While most people focus on divvying up their personal property, familial home, and bank and retirement accounts, others need to consider matters such as what to do with a business. If this matter isn't appropriately addressed, a business can be susceptible to poor ownership and management.

This is why succession planning can sometimes prove beneficial during the estate planning process. Through succession planning, an individual can name who will take over a business in the event of death, thereby ensuring that the business continues to run smoothly. Engaging in this practice forces an individual to carefully consider who is best to take ownership of a business through careful analysis of skills and talents.

Estate planning is often seen as a way to dictate how assets will be distributed to one's family upon death. This can sometimes be a pretty straightforward process, especially when assets are to be divided amongst a spouse and children. Since this is the prevailing view of those who think about estate planning, many individuals without spouse and/or children often determine that estate planning won't benefit them. But these individuals are wrong.

To start, everyone should start an estate plan if for no other reason than to ensure that important financial and health care decisions will be made by a trusted person in the event of incapacitation. Therefore, Arizona residents should think about creating powers of attorney and health care proxies that meet their needs and put their minds at ease.

There are many issues to consider when estate planning. This is especially true to those who have a significant number of assets. For these individuals, merely identifying and valuing all those assets can be a headache. Of course, not everyone has vast amounts of wealth to leave to loved ones, but even those of modest means can benefit from estate planning.

Just look at most people's most valued asset: the familial home. Determining how to leave a residence to an heir can be challenging and costly. This is why it may be beneficial to consider either purchasing the residence in trust or later placing the home in a trust. By utilizing a revocable trust, a homeowner can continue to benefit from use of the home and place conditions on how named beneficiaries can use the residence once it is passed on to them. Since this type of trust is revocable, named beneficiaries can be changed at any time.

The definition of family has certainly broaden over the last 50 years. Back then, most families were comprised of married men and women who had children and who stayed in their marriages until death. In the modern world, though, there is no "normal" family. In fact, only a third of all marriages conform to the traditional definition of married heterosexuals with children. These modern familial units can be comprised of unmarried couples, stepchildren, adopted children, and even children conceived through artificial means. While the world around us has changed considerably over time, estate planning law has not, which means it is on you to ensure that your estate plan is customized to fit your unique situation. Failing to do so could mean that your loved ones may miss out on inheriting the assets you want them to have.

To develop a satisfactory estate plan, it is worth considering a number of questions. To start, you need to think about who you want to inherit your assets. Then, you need to determine how much of your estate you want each of those individuals to obtain after your death. You might then want to consider when you want those beneficiaries to take control of those assets, since you can restrict that through the use of an estate planning vehicle like a trust.