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Ask General Counsel: A legal game plan to protect your estate

Friday, 29 April 2022 / Published in Ask General Counsel, Estate Planning

Ask General Counsel: A legal game plan to protect your estate

Published by Ask General Counsel on InsideNova, 4/27/2022

Image from Inside Nova

In this edition of Ask General Counsel, Ann-Marie Murzin, who leads General Counsel, P.C.’s Estate Planning Practice, discusses a legal game plan to protect and safeguard yourself and your family.

Disability or Death:  Who will manage your money and affairs? There are several options that allow YOU to provide the strategy. Whether single, married, with or without kids, it is important to have a plan. If you don’t have a will or other estate planning documents, or if your documents may be outdated, contact Ann-Marie Murzin today.

Revocable Living Trust:   A revocable living trust (RLT) is a trust you create during your lifetime and can change at any time prior to your incapacity or death. For this strategy to work, assets must be placed into the trust. If the trust does not own a particular account or property, the trust terms will not control what happens to it.

Not only does an RLT allow for continued management of your assets if you become unable to act for yourself, but a properly funded RLT allows trust assets to avoid the probate process. Planning with a trust can help avoid legal fees and court costs, as well as court-imposed delays imposed by the probate process.

The bottom line is that there are a multitude of benefits to using a trust as part of your game plan from minimizing legal fees and maintaining privacy to managing your assets the way you desire even when you cannot do so personally.

Power of Attorney:  An added tool that can help manage your money and real estate is a Power of Attorney. This document allows you to choose a trusted person (your agent or fiduciary) to oversee your financial matters on your behalf. Your agent can handle a wide variety of transactions, from signing checks to opening a bank account, depending on the authority you give that person.

Advance Healthcare Directive:  A living will or advance health care directive allows you to clearly convey your wishes about end-of-life decisions. Absent specific instructions from you, your spouse/partner/family member is going to be left trying to figure out what you would have wanted, and at worst will be met with pushback from the medical provider to implement your health case wishes.

Privacy Waiver:  A privacy waiver, which looks similar to a HIPAA authorization form medical providers can offer, allows you to grant certain individuals access to your medical information (e.g., to get a status update on your condition or receive your test results) without giving those individuals the authority to make any decisions on your behalf.

Let Us Be Your Team:  Proper estate planning is a must for everyone. Not only do you have to manage tax, asset protection and other financial concerns, but you also need to protect yourself and your family. We welcome the opportunity to work with you, and any other financial or life insurance professionals on your team, to help craft a game plan that will have you and your loved ones protected.

To accommodate your busy schedule, our estate planning attorney team is available for both in-person and virtual meetings.  Our law firm offers evening and weekend hours by appointment to help start your planning process.  Contact Ann-Marie Murzin at (571) 396-8460 or by email at intake@gcpc.com.

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