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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A: If there are no changes to be made, every 10 years your will and your estate planning documents should be reviewed. However, of course, if there are changes over the course of that 10 year period of time, if beneficiaries pass away or family becomes estranged then the changes should be made as needed. But if there are not pressing changes to be made, then every 10 years or so you should sit down and consult with an estate planning attorney to determine if all your needs are still currently met.

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Even as a lawyer who practices in Estate Planning I didn’t have a Will until I was about 30 years old. I figured since I only had debt if my family wanted to fight over that, they were welcome to it.

So this blog post is directed at the so-called “Millennials” – who are largely defined as folks from about 34 years of age (year of birth, 1982) down to about 16 year old. Largely speaking, it’s people from their 20s to mid-30s. Maybe you haven’t acquired a great deal of wealth yet, but let’s talk about a very important aspect to Estate Planning – not so much a Will and Testament, but other documents which are relevant as well.

Now let me start out by saying that every adult really needs a Will regardless of the size of their Estate mainly because you should have ultimate say over who gets what even from your modest wealth.

But that aside, there’s another part of Estate Planning that is very important for every adult regardless of age or wealth – it’s the Health Care Directives. These have nothing to do with death and everything to do with life. Let’s say you’re alive but you’re temporarily incapacitated – say, in a bad accident and you’re left in a coma. And thereafter it can take weeks or months to rehabilitate yourself to the point where you can handle your own affairs again. Who will handle your finances while you languish in a hospital? Who will make medical decisions for you if you cannot make these decisions yourself?

This is where the Health Care Surrogate form and the Durable Power of Attorney come into play and they’re invaluable tools to help maintain your household and medical care when you cannot do so yourself. The details of these forms go beyond the scope of this simple blog post, but just know that without these forms, if something happens to you without these Surrogate forms, someone in your family would need to Petition the Court to have themselves declared your guardian. This entails a lawyer, a physician to testify to the Court that you’re incapacitated, and a likely person to serve as your guardian. This process can be long and drawn out, especially if family members argue about the identity of the best person to be your guardian – not to mention expensive.

Now these are very important documents but they’re also incredibly powerful documents – when you give someone your power of attorney, they can do everything you can do with your finances. They become a financial surrogate to your assets from Day 1. So who is named on your Power of Attorney should be someone you have complete, total trust and faith in. The most likely people named on a Power of Attorney is typically a spouse, a parent, maybe a brother or sister. Casually naming your bar buddy because he buys you beers probably isn’t a good choice.

The same is true with the Health Care Surrogate form – since the person you nominate will be making medical decisions for you, it should be someone who you know is in your corner at all times. The Health Care Surrogate form includes the “Living Will”, which states that if you’re in a terminal condition or persistent vegetative (long term coma) you don’t want any extraordinary measures taken to keep you artificially alive. Some refer to this as the oh-so-cheery “pull the plug” document. So, choose carefully – these can be life and death decisions!

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However, on this two year anniversary it is time to reflect and acknowledge that I’m incredibly, unbelievably grateful the way things have developed over the last 24 months.

Two years ago this week I left a pretty hostile work situation. It’s not worth going into the details, but suffice it to say as communications devolved between me and my former law partner you could cut the tension in the office with a knife. A whole bunch of other nasty things were going on and I determined it was time to make an immediate move, legally and ethically.

So, after being a member of a law firm for twenty-some years of various sizes from 2 to 3 to 12 and back to 2, I finally struck out on my own.

Given the urgency of the nasty situation, within one day I contacted a realtor, looked around and found a really great little office originally built by a commercial builder as his first place, tailor made to his specifications. It has lots of windows, great views of trees and a meandering stream (which becomes a raging river in the torrential rains of this past summer) and is just the perfect size for a small firm. It’s very comfortable and easy and clients love it.

The details of the following two weeks were a blur: Signing leases and contracts, turning on utilities, a trip to Tampa to buy lots of office furniture and computers, getting a copier/scanner and the purchase of a really big Smart TV for the conference room where I can project iPad images of contracts on the screen. Oh , and writing checks. Lots and lots of checks.

At the time I wasn’t convinced I’d last a full year. Would clients find me? Would people hire a sole practitioner? Do I have a solid enough client base to sustain me and my paralegal rather than split the overhead costs with another lawyer?  And then came the occasional irrational morning angst where I was convinced despite everything to the contrary that I’d eventually had to move to and live in a refrigerator box under a bridge somewhere after I spent my last dollar.

Even at the one year mark of freedom, exactly one year ago, I was still looking over my shoulder and hoping I could continue representing good people and actually make a living in the process.

Today, it is the two year anniversary of being on my own and I can finally say with all confidence that this is the single best decision I’ve ever made – despite all of the concerns and financial vulnerabilities.

I’ve had to reinvent myself a bit – I’m not only an attorney representing injured clients, I also work in estate planning. Additionally, I’m a Circuit Court Civil Mediator as well as a licensed Arbitrator with FINRA.

I remarked to a friend recently that even though my paralegal and I really hunker down for long hours of work during the week, I almost feel like I’m semi-retired. The difference between now and two years ago is lack of stress. There is almost no stress if you structure your practice the right way and don’t live from payroll to payroll. I can take the cases I’m most interested in, cultivate relationships with my clients that only helps their claims in the long run, I can turn away matters that don’t have sufficient merit and I’m not beholden to anyone else for my financial success. And my reward for this structured practice is not only less stress but a better and much more lucrative practice.

I cannot take that for granted.  In addition to having a terrific paralegal, I have to thank my clients, existing, future and recurring. I also have to recognize my friends and family who, thankfully, never hesitate to refer me to their friends and family. Being a sole practitioner has really allowed me to develop my practice in a way that is uniquely my own.

And I have you to thank for it.

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He went on to say, “All states allow a No-Contest Clause in one way or another.”

Oh, where to begin?

First, it is always better to have the expert advice of an attorney for your Estate Planning. Just like every person is different, so is every Estate. If you think some generic website loaded up with Wills will fit your needs like a glove, trust me, they won’t.

But onto the planners point: “No-Contest clauses are valid in all states.” He is dead wrong. If you insert a No-Contest clause in your Florida Will it will be invalid. Florida Statute 732.517 states that if you write a sentence into your Will or other testamentary instrument to threaten someone into refraining from acting or ceasing to act it is unenforceable.

Sometimes a testator will attempt to minimize a beneficiary’s inheritance by limiting it to a very small amount knowing that the no-contest clause will seek to take even that away if they file suit to invalidate a Will. In Florida this logic would backfire. So, if a Florida resident listened to this “expert” and inserted a no-contest clause, his (or her) intent would have been thwarted. Junior can contest this amount and might very well get a greater inheritance depending upon the evidence.

Think this can be overcome by placing the clause in a Trust instead? Nope. F.S. 736.1108, the Florida Trust Code, also states that a No-Contest clause is unenforceable.

So, next time a national “expert” claims to know what is best for you, consult a local expert on why that isn’t necessarily so.

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