Posts Tagged ‘Foundations’
Tuesday Topic | When To Update Your Estate Plan in Michigan
Written by Christopher J. Berry, Esq. on November 11, 2008 – 2:33 pm -
Every Tuesday I have a meeting with other business people in the area and we each talk a few minutes about our practice. As a Michigan estate planning lawyer I talked about the need to review your estate plan. I was asked a question about how often to review your estate plan the night before as well.
What I told the group was that our firm believes in annual reviews of your estate plan. We care very much about our clients and the hard work that was put into thier estate plan, we do not want their plan to fail due to a lack of maintenance.
Setting up an estate plan is not a “one-and-done” propostion. Just like going to the dentist, an estate plan needs at least annual check ups. Occasionally like a dentist there will be major work, such as an amendment to the plan. But as a whole, only a few tune ups each year.
The reason for the need for check-ups is threefold.
- Your family situation may change. There may be a new child to plan for, a divorce, marriage, etc.
- Your assets may change. Have you added new bank accounts, bought a new house, new life insurance, etc?
- The laws change. There have been many changes to both Michigan and Federal law in the past 10 years alone that effect estate planning. With the new administration there is bound to be new Federal Estate tax laws as well.
So, have you updated your estate plan? If you have an estate plan with another attorney, have they cared enough to contact you?
Tags: Estate Planning, Foundations, Tuesday TopicsPosted in Estate Planning, Foundations, Living Trusts | No Comments »
Major Life Events; It’s Time To Review Your Estate Plan
Written by Christopher J. Berry, Esq. on July 23, 2008 – 7:50 pm -Losing a job is a major life event. With the Big 3 making job cuts and Chrysler announcing today another 1,000 jobs will be lost (read here), it is important to remember that any major life events trigger a need to review your estate plan.
With job loss there can be changes in retirement accounts. Any time there are changes in title to accounts, such as rolling a 401k from an old company into an IRA, there needs to be a review to make sure that with the new account any trusts are properly funded and any beneficiary forms are designating who they should designate. Failure to do so can lead to unintended consequences such as disinherited heirs.
Major life events (job loss, job changes, divorce) can be difficult to deal with, but it’s important to make sure that once the dust settles, everything is still in place the way it should.
Our firm has created a systematized process to review estate plans (called Foundations), similar to how you have dental check ups, to make sure your estate plan still achieves the goals you desired when you originally created it.
Tags: Annual Review, Estate Planning, FoundationsPosted in Estate Planning, Financial Planning, Foundations, News | 1 Comment »
