You may have already sat down with an attorney and created a Trust but do you know if any unexpected aspects of your life will work against it? There is more to estate planning than simply creating a Will or establishing a Trust. Making sure all the parts of your life align in order to support your estate plan is just as important as the plan itself! Having a coordinated estate plan helps ensure that your wishes are followed after your death and helps avoid unnecessarily diminished assets due to the costs of probate court proceedings.
Even after you have a Trust established, some of your assets may fall outside of the Trust’s control. For example, if you have an IRA account with beneficiaries attached to it, the assets in the IRA would go to those beneficiaries. If those beneficiaries are not up to date, your assets will not pass to the parties you wish to receive them. Creating a coordinated estate plan would mean updating any accounts, such as an IRA, with your desired beneficiaries, whether that be the asset recipients directly or the Trust itself.
It is important to understand what will affect your estate plan and make sure that everything is working together. Often it is easy to forget just how many moving pieces of your life you need to take into account when planning your estate. Without a coordinated estate plan, your loved ones may go through unnecessary turmoil, large amounts of your assets may go in unexpected and unintended ways, and your assets may be diminished from the expenses of the probate process.
Make sure you are working with estate planners that have your back and will help you create a coordinated estate plan. For more information or for help planning your estate, contact Horn & Johnsen at https://hornjohnsen.com/contact-us/
