Estate Planning
Estate Planning isn’t so much about your assets as it is about your goals for your assets. Whether you have millions or the house your husband built and the carousel horse he carved, the questions are: who you want to benefit and how you want them to benefit. Because life can be a little tricky, you need to answer those questions for three periods of time: while you’re healthy, if you’re incapacitated, and upon your death. No matter what your answers are, when you have answers for the questions of all three periods of time— and the documents to back those answers up— you have an Estate Plan!
So, why don’t the majority of adults in the U.S. have Estate Planning documents? Let’s walk through some of these questions. While you’re healthy, you probably want YOU to benefit from your assets in whatever way you want to benefit from them. Done! But, what about incapacity? You should still be the one that benefit (and your children, and maybe your spouse), but who do you want in charge of finances? Who do you want in charge of your assets? What if it can’t be your spouse, or you’re not married? What if that one person you were thinking of isn’t able to help when you need the help, because they’re sick themselves? Then, we turn to the next period of time, upon your passing. You might want your spouse— and then your children— to benefit from your assets upon your death, but what if your spouse remarries? Would you want to require a pre-nup? What if your children are young when they inherit? Or, what if your children are in a rocky marriage? What if your children have special needs and need to stay qualified for government benefits?
All of these questions can and should be addressed by a complete Estate Plan. Because of your estate planning goals, a trust might be the best tool— or, maybe the best strategy for you is a Will, Beneficiary Designations, and Essential Documents. Maybe it’s something in-between. The goal at Empowered Estate Planning is to understand your goals, give you information about what’s possible (and with what tools). Then, instead of the law happening to you and your loved ones, you get to use the law to accomplish your goals. That’s an Empowered Estate Plan.
estate planning with Empowered
Initial Consult
This is our first meeting and our goal is just to share information. You’ll share information about your people, your assets, and your goals and we’ll share information about different estate planning strategies to see what might be best for you. If you’ve already done some estate planning, try to bring those documents; otherwise, you don’t need to bring anything.
Details
In our second meeting, we’ll get into the details. You’ll bring legal names, dates of birth, and roughly who you want to do what. You’ll also bring thoughts about goals or things you’re worried about and we’ll work together to come up with language to incentivize or avoid those things.
Signing
In our last meeting, we’ll walk through what the different documents are and how they work together. We’ll talk about any questions you may have and what steps you may need to take moving forward. And that’s it. You’re done.