Many people spend more time planning other aspects of their life than they do with estate planning. While it may not be fun to think of who will inherit your assets when you’re gone, failure to do so means that your hard-earned property may not be divided in the way you like.
Why should you engage in estate planning?
There are many great benefits to planning your estate before your death. Some of these benefits include:
- The main benefit is that you get to choose who inherits which of your possessions. Otherwise, the court will determine who receives which of your property, even if you have a surviving spouse.
- If you die prematurely, you’ll only be able to name your children’s guardian if you have an estate in place. This will allow you to ensure that your children are cared for in a manner that you approve of.
- One of the most common and achievable goals is to reduce the amount of taxes that are left behind for your loved ones to deal with once you’ve died. Since estate planning is all about protecting your loved ones, you want to make sure that they’re also protected from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Therefore, you want to create a plan to transfer your assets to them that has the smallest possible tax burden. Without such a plan in place, your loved ones may be left bearing a hefty tax bill.
- When you have an estate in place, it’s less likely that your family will be faced with strife and ugly legal battles. Instead, you’ll be able to stop the fight before it even begins by choosing who gets control of your finances and assets when you become mentally incapacitated or die. Doing so will not only quell family strife, but it’ll also give you peace of mind in knowing that everything has been handled the way you’d like it to be.
To reap these benefits, you’ll need to do some hard work ahead of time by planning for your estate. This matter becomes even more important if you’ve had more than one spouse or child from more than one marriage, as this can bring about even more challenges once you die.
How does estate planning work?
First of all, you should know that this isn’t something that only rich people should engage in. By having a plan in place, you’re ensuring that settling your affairs doesn’t take a long time and costs a lot of money. This is something that could happen and impact your family even if you don’t have an expensive home, a large IRA, or any valuable assets to pass on to them.
To have your assets and loved ones protected once you’ve passed, you must engage in estate planning. Failure to do so could result in large tax burdens or the courts determining how to divide your assets or even raise your children. Since you want to avoid this, contact us today at the Blenner Law Group Palm Harbor in Palm Harbor, FL.
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