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Estate Planning
Estate planning is about preparing for uncertainty. The primary goals are to protect your wealth, independence, and quality of life, provide for your loved ones, and minimise the impact of taxes and other costs associated with asset transfer.
Our services help you care for your loved ones while controlling your future. It's a personal process that can arise at various life stages. Proper planning can bring peace of mind, ensuring that your assets are efficiently transferred according to your wishes.
Effective estate planning starts with an in-depth meeting with a qualified attorney to assess your situation, goals, and needs. A plan design provides a clear visual understanding of the estate plan. After the documents are prepared and executed, the process requires implementation, where assets are retitled, and beneficiary designations are updated to ensure they follow the predetermined wishes expressed in the estate plan.
The Vero Beach law office of Bruce Estate Law utilises an individualised approach to designing a comprehensive estate plan for its clients. Whether it's the first time a client has met with an attorney for estate planning purposes, they have recently gotten married, had children, divorced, moved to Florida, or are merely updating existing estate planning documents, Nick Bruce welcomes the opportunity to assist throughout this very important process. This ensures their plan reflects their desires, anticipates future changes, and gives them peace of mind.
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENT
Last Will and Testament
A last will, and testament is the document that spells out what should happen to your assets passing through probate after your death. This is also the document that can lay out who should take care of any minor children after you’re gone. The person responsible for administer the will Florida is known as a personal representative. if someone were to pass away without a valid will, their assets would pass through the probate process and be distributed according to Florida’s default laws, known as the laws of intestacy.
As some people can imagine, the laws of intestacy are actually in line or mirrored with the desires of a lot of people. For instance, if a husband and wife have no children and one spouse passes away, the laws of intestacy dictate that all assets passing through probate or distribute to the spouse. This is what most married couples would want. Similarly, if someone passes away, leaving, no spouse, but only children, the laws of intestacy require that the children equally share in all of the probate assets, again, this is something that very frequently is desired by parents.
So, even though the laws of intestacy may match your wishes, a valid will is still an important document as it can simplify and smooth out that probate process as well as give you control over who is to administer that process.
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENT
Designation of Health Care Surrogate
A designation of health care surrogate, or health care power of attorney, is a document that impacts your life before, but not after, your death. In this way, it is different than what a lot of people think about when they think of estate planning.
That is because it is only valid before death, and once someone passes away, this document has no more meaning. This is the document one uses to appoint someone to make medical decisions on your behalf if you are unable to make them yourself (even in relatively minor situations where someone is expected to make a full recovery). Carefully considering and naming one or more people who know you and your wishes and can help your medical providers make sound decisions on your behalf helps give people a lot of peace of mind.
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENT
Living Will
A Living Will is a document that allows an individual to declare in advance what they want to have happen, if they are ever found in a persistent, vegetative state or similar condition, where there’s no hope of medical recovery.
This is another document that can only impact your life prior to your death. For those that want to control what happens to their body in those conditions, and particularly if they would like to be kept comfortable, but not kept artificially alive on ventilators and through forced nutrition, stating those desires upfront from a place of peace and making sound decisions helps your wishes to be carried out in these tragic terrible situations.
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENT
Durable Power of Attorney
Another document that has an impact before, but not after, death is the durable power of attorney. This document also names an agent (or attorney in fact) to handle your affairs for you. But unlike the medical surrogate, this document empowers your agent to handle things like banking transactions, real estate, signing contracts on your behalf, etc.
Another document that has an impact before, but not after, death is the durable power of attorney. This document also names an agent (or attorney in fact) to handle your affairs for you. But unlike the medical surrogate, this document empowers your agent to handle things like banking transactions, real estate, signing contracts on your behalf, etc.
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENT
Revocable Living Trust
A revocable living trust is another very common estate planning document. It operates similarly, and in some ways replaces, parts of a Last Will and Testament and the Durable Power of Attorney. Assets that have been retitled into a Revocable Living Trust (or RLT) are managed by the Trustee. Ordinarily, upon execution of the RLT the “Grantor” or “Settlor” (i.e. – the client signing this and the other estate planning documents) is the Trustee. So while they are alive and competent, they manage their assets just they did before their accounts, or real estate or other assets were retitled into their RLT.
However, an RLT often will name a successor trustee, and if you become incapacitated, the successor trustee can take over the management of these affairs, again without the need for a guardianship or other formal declaration of incapacity. In this way, it acts like a durable power of attorney over the assets titled in the name of the RLT. Similarly, upon one’s passing, the successor trustee named will take over and can distribute the assets as detailed in the RLT to those individuals, groups or charities you’ve named. In this way, it functions similarly to your Last Will and Testament. However, unlike a Last Will and Testament, administering a revocable living trust does not require the successor trustee to apply to the probate court for their authority. So assets titled in a RLT can often be distributed quicker and more privately than those that pass under a Last Will and Testament through probate court. While a Revocable Living Trust is not for everyone, it has a lot of advantages for people willing to put in some effort up front and is commonly recommended.
Estate planning can be easy to put off and involves conversations that no one wants to have. Unfortunately, oftentimes people recognize the need for these discussions when it is too late – my family member has passed away, been seriously injured, or is now incapacitated, and unable to legally execute documents, memorializing, or conveying their wishes. Don’t wait for the future to happen; make it happen. Start your estate planning journey and achieve your goals with the help of an estate planning attorney from Bruce Estate Law.