Are you prepared? Do you have a plan for your children? Do you want to protect your family and your assets? Read on…
Last year, I hopped on a plane with my husband for a trip to Alaska without my kids. There was a small niggling (yes that is a real word!) in the back of my mind telling me “Larissa, you NEED to have all your paperwork in order. What if something happens to you and Jon on this trip? Is everything in your paperwork in order?”
Unfortunately, I could not answer YES although that thought persisted for some time. We had a fabulous trip and we made it home alive. Back home, I had good intentions to sit down with a lawyer to get our estate plan in order. But when I got home, the whirlwind of life – combined with trying to set aside time and money to sit with a lawyer – pushed that niggling feeling to the bottom of my to-do list again. This should not have been an excuse. I am embarrassed to say this, but after talking to many other fellow parents who have similar circumstances as we do, I know that I am not alone and many of you out there do not have your paperwork/estate plan together either. As responsible parents, this is a task we MUST do to provide for our kids. It is one of the most important things we can do for them. It is so important to have a plan for who will take care of your kids and how your assets will be distributed – saving hours and thousands of dollars in time if something ever did happen.
Luckily a few trusted lawyers – and fellow parents – I know were able to recognize that many of us busy parents are serial procrastinators too and made a super-easy way to get your estate plan, will, and living trust done ONLINE in under 15 Minutes and about 1/3 of the cost of going to a lawyer in person. Abo Biglarpour, Bryce Randle and Garrett Barlow started this amazing website called LivingTrustify.com that makes it super simple to complete your estate plan (available in all 50 states). You can complete everything on-line but you do need to get some of the papers signed by a notary to legalize it. For the current situation, you can complete all paperwork and then head to a local UPS store as they are still open right now and they all have a notary in place. Having your own gloves and pen is probably the safest route. Or you can complete and save the finalizing with a notary until things die down, but I say the sooner the better!
That is certainly MY KIND of way to get things done – fast, easy, affordable, from the ease of my own home with help a phone call or email away if needed. So, we finally DID IT! Within 15 minutes with my husband, we had all the legal paperwork complete as to who we wanted to serve as guardians for our children and who would make the financial and health care decisions for me and my husband if anything happened to us.
So, while most of us are living life from our own homes and doing business in our pajamas right now with social distancing, this is a perfect time to get your affairs in order.
Hop on over to this site at LivingTrustify and complete your estate planning checklist and in the last step before payment enter in this code “TEACHERS20” for my readers (and friends of readers – you can share!) to get 20% off through September 1, and get it done…please for the sake of your children. (Applies even if you are not a teacher!)
I can tell you it certainly takes a load of pressure off your shoulders.
I know I will be able to climb any glacier, hop on an ATV, fly down a zipline and explore every corner of our beautiful earth with my hubby and feel so much more at ease!
If I did not convince you of the importance of having an Estate Plan – although you probably already know you need to do it!), please keep reading these FAQs with some important information from the creators of this website.
Top 3 reasons why all Parents need an estate plan
- 1 – You make important decisions now instead of leaving it up to your family, friends or a judge to make them for you. Among other things, you choose who takes care of your kids if you can’t and who manages your finances and makes health care decisions for you if you’re unable to yourself.
- 2 – Avoid the cost, delay, publicity and complexity of probate court. Without question, doing your estate plan saves thousands of dollars.
- 3 – You can choose at what age your children inherit your assets if something happens to you. Without a trust or will, your children would have full control of their inheritance at age 18. With an estate plan, you can select the age that children have control of their inheritance. Prior to your specified age, the trustee you name would manage the inheritance for your children.
Why do you need a Living Trust and Estate Plan instead of just a will?
An estate plan consists of documents (trust, will, power of attorney, advance health care directive, HIPAA Authorization and nomination of guardian) used to determine who takes care of your children if you can’t, who gets your assets if you die, who handles your finances if you can’t, and who makes medical decisions if you can’t. If you do not actively make these decisions by creating an estate plan, they will be made by a combination of judges, family members, and statutory code sections.
A trust is generally the best way to determine who gets your assets if you die. It is much better than a will or no estate plan, because a will or no estate plan are administered by a complicated, time-consuming, and expensive process known as probate. Most people who experience probate decide to create an estate plan in order to help loved ones avoid dealing with probate in the future. Unlike a will, a trust goes into effect immediately, not just upon death. After you sign your trust, you need to change title of your assets to the name of your trust. Don’t worry, you are the trustee of your own trust as well as the beneficiary when you set it up. You manage your assets just like you did without a trust. If you are no longer able to make decisions, the trustee you named manages your trust for you. Upon your passing, the trustee steps in and distributes your assets to your beneficiaries – all without probate court.
*If you have less than $100,000 in assets and don’t own a home, then you only need a will-based estate plan instead of a trust because you will be under the threshold required for probate.
How having an estate plan can save $ in the long run?
Probate court is very expensive (thousands to tens of thousands of dollars) and can even occur during your lifetime if you become incapacitated. This is called a conservatorship (or guardianship) where someone has to ask a probate court judge permission to be your decision-maker. No one has automatic authority to make decisions on your behalf, not even a spouse. Conservatorship can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars and there is ongoing court supervision, which means ongoing legal fees.
So I implore you, make the time, get your Estate plan done and breathe a little easier so you and your spouse can travel (when it is safe to again) together knowing that your affairs are in order! And if your own parents or grandparents don’t have one yet either, please help them get one started!
This information is great. It really resonated with me and was easy to read. I plan on sharing this with others. Thank You.