Estate Planning

Estate planning is designed to help you manage and preserve your assets while you are alive, and to conserve and control the distribution of your assets after your death according to your goals and objectives. In other words, it’s about deciding, while you’re alive, how you want your assets to be used to help the people you love and/or the organizations that matter most to you.

Estate planning is an essential consideration for people of all ages – the earlier, the better. Too often, many people put it off — sometimes until it’s too late. The time to begin developing your estate plan is now, otherwise your estate, your assets and your personal wishes could end up being decided by your state government (this is called intestate).

But what estate planning means to you specifically depends on who you are. Your age, health, wealth, lifestyle, goals, and many other factors determine your particular estate planning needs. For example, you may have a modest estate and may be concerned only that certain people receive particular things. A simple living trust and will may be sufficient for you. Or, you may have a large estate, and minimizing any potential estate tax impact is your foremost goal. Here, you may need to use more sophisticated techniques in your estate plan and multiple trusts may be called for.

When assisting clients with their estate plan it is important to note that we are not attorneys and thus to not draft legal documents, nor do we render legal advice. As our firm has CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Practitioners, they work with their client’s chosen estate planning lawyer(s) in a team effort to help evaluate suitable planning techniques and strategies so to enable our clients to effectively meet their estate planning goals. Lastly, when appropriate, we may also offer corporate trustee services through Private Trust Company, (PTC), a wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial, for those clients that have a need for such services.