Estate Planning and Its Benefits

Estate planning is a great way of ensuring your desires in terms of healthcare and final property are honoured and your family is still provided for during your absence. Even though it is usually overlooked or downplayed in favour of other immediate needs, comprehensive estate plans can resolve plenty of legal questions that could arise upon death. Estate is made up of all the property and individual owned when they died e.g. bank accounts, securities, real estate, personal property such as jewellery and life insurance policies. Below are some advantages of properly drafted estate plans. Check out https://www.fslaw.com/services/estate-planning to get started.


With a properly drafted estate plan, people can still provide for their families even after they die. Without a comprehensive estate plan, families of a deceased individual often get less of his/her property and spend too much time and effort getting what they can. Meaning that families get left in limbo, without enough finances to cover living expenses and bills. Comprehensive estate planning therefore ensures that families are still provided for even after death.


When people die without a good estate plan, most of what they leave behind can be eaten up by court costs and attorney’s fees. When people die without comprehensive estate plans, courts become responsible for handling everything i.e. guardianship of the children, dissolution of businesses and property distribution. All this is referred to as probate and is a very expensive process that easily exceeds USD10,000 for even very modest estates. All the money wasted in probate could have been used by the deceased’s family to meet living expenses instead of filling the pockets of an attorney. See page for more info.


Proper estate planning allows the family of the deceased to access the property they need without much delay. Lack of a comprehensive estate plan could make a family weight 3-9 months until they receive anything from the deceased’s estate. Good estate planning on the other hand means a family can access all the funds they require to pay bills, pay for the funeral, pay any outstanding medical bills and cover basically anything else they require without delay.


A comprehensive estate plan also ensures that retirement is an easy process. Even though many people associate estate planning with death, they can be very surprised to discover that estate planning could be of great benefit to them while they are still alive. One such area people can benefit from his healthcare, since estate planning ensures people are eligible for government benefits such as Medicare. Estate planning allows people eligibility to Medicare, something they have been paying for most of their working life, which significantly cuts healthcare costs for their loved ones.

 

 

To learn more about estate planning, check out https://www.huffpost.com/entry/5-essential-steps-to-estate-planning_b_591b5f31e4b021dd5a828f87.