Areas of Practice
ESTATE PLANNING
Your estate plan is a snapshot of you, your family, your assets and the tax laws in effect at the time it was created. All of these change over time, and so should your plan. It is unreasonable to expect the simple will written when you were a newlywed to be effective now that you have a growing family, or now that you are divorced from your spouse, or now that you are retired and have an ever increasing swarm of grandchildren! Over the course of your lifetime, your estate plan will need check-ups, maintenance, tweaking, maybe even replacing. So, how do you know when it's time to give your estate plan a check-up?
Generally, any change in your personal, family, financial or health situation, or a change in the tax laws, could prompt a change in your estate plan.
Trust administration
If estate planning is the process of designing a playbook, estate and trust administration occurs when the playbook is put into action. The process begins with an event that triggers a provision in your estate plan, such as incapacity or death. The plan becomes 'executory', meaning that the individuals you designated in your plan documents must step into action and execute according to your instructions.
Probate
Probate is a court-supervised process for distributing the individually owned assets of a deceased person. Assets are distributed to beneficiaries in accordance to the instructions written in the person's will.
Estate Taxation
Estate Taxation has changed considerably in the last few years, and remains in flux. Many people have older plans that may or may not be appropriate for todays higher exemptions. For many people, estate tax planning may no longer be the main focus, but rather, income and capital gains tax planning may be of more importance.