Tips for Keeping Estate Planning Simple in Kansas
Sometimes people avoid doing things that they know are good for their family and themselves. Often, it is because those things seem too complicated or overwhelming. Estate planning is a thing that many people put off for one or both of those reasons. Fortunately, you do not have to do that. Estate planning does not have to be complicated, and it can be accomplished one step at a time. Even better, you do not have to figure it all out on your own.
An excellent place to begin is assessing your financial situation. Not only does examining and making an inventory of your finances help you start the estate planning process, but it also enables you to see where all of your assets are right now, which is useful for making financial plans that can protect and make good use of your wealth right now. Gather information about what you own and what you owe for your home, business, investments, and all of your other assets and debts.
When you have an inventory of your assets, decide how you would like them managed if you become incapacitated and distributed when you pass away. Those decisions will help you as you work with an attorney to create a financial power of attorney and a will.
Your health and the wellbeing of your family are concerns that you can deal with in estate planning, too. If you have young children, include a provision in your will for guardianship. Writing out your wishes for your health care and designating a health care agent will aid your family in caring for you if you become incapacitated. As you might imagine, this can prevent a great deal of anguish that they would likely experience if you were incapacitated and they did not know which health care procedures you wanted them to choose or decline on your behalf.
Once you have ideas about what you would like to include in your estate plan, find an estate planning attorney that you like. Your attorney can help you draft your will and create health care and financial powers of attorney. They will ensure that all of your estate planning documents are in the proper format and have all the required elements to be valid. Your estate planning attorney can also help you develop clear estate planning goals and determine whether additional estate planning tools like trusts would help you accomplish those goals. Once you have your estate plan, you can change or update it with your attorney’s help at any time. Your estate planning attorney is a valuable resource who can help you know when to change or add to your estate plan, how to store financial and other documents that are involved in your estate plan, and so much more.
It’s time to get started on your estate plan. Schedule a consultation with Wichita estate planning attorney J. Joseph Weber today. Alternately, you may contact us online for your convenience.