The Top Ten Reasons to Plan Your Estate

10. Makes sure it goes to whom you want, when you want and the way your want. Most estate plans, be they wills or trust, leave the assets to the next generation out-right (i.e., in their hands) in equal shares.

However, with a little bit of though on your part, and some guidance from an experienced estate planning attorney, you can dramatically improve the way your estate is ultimately distributed.

For example, you can delay large bequests until children or grandchildren are older or give it to them in stages so that they have the chance to make some mistakes with the money without jeopardizing the whole inheritance.

Similarly, you can place conditions on receipt of the money such as "only upon graduation with a bachelor's degree" or "only to be used to purchase an annuity to provide a lifetime income for the beneficiary."

Everyone understands and wants to save fees and taxes, but what about saving time? By planning ahead with trusts instead of your wills you can abbreviate the settlement process, thus aiding the grieving process and allowing families to get on with their lives.

In addition, while assets are tied up in a lengthy estate proceeding, valuable opportunities may be lost or additional expenses incurred, such as having to maintain a home. With the volatility of investments today, no one can afford to have their affairs tied up for any significant amount of time.

New IRA rules allow you to multiply your IRA ten time more by "stretching" them out for your children or grandchildren. When a parent dies and leaves an IRA to a child, the child may not rollover the IRA into its own, but instead must take a distribution. However, with proper advise, your son or daughter can elect under the Internal Revenue Code to take the distribution out in small increments over their lifetime.

For example, if son is age 30 when parent dies, he has a 52 year remaining life expectancy. If he elects for the "stretch-out", he take 1/52nd next year, the 1/51st the following year, etc. If son was left $100,000, and only took the minimum distribution and earned an average of 10% a year on the investment, he would end up getting over $2,750,000 for his parent's IRA!

Did you know that eh divorce rate today is about 50%? This has spawned a new term - when someone gets married these days it's call a "starter marriage." With middle class people leaving hundreds of thousands's of dollars to their children, doesn't it make sense to protect it from a 50% divorce rate?

By leaving assets to your children in a trust (we call these heritage Trust(, you cannot only protect from a divorce but also from creditors in the event your son or daughter ever get sued. This means that their money is protected (1) if they or someone they are legally responsible forever has a major medical problem (2) if they get sued for a personal injury claim (3) if they lose their job or business and have to file bankruptcy, etc.

Most estate plan leave the money to the children. Sot let's say that you have left $250,000 to your son and $250,000 to your daughter. Now if they die (remember this is after your 're gone) who inherits from them? Your son-in-law or daughter-in-law would. Can they get remarried and share your $250.000 with a complete stranger? Sure.

Happens all the time. What can you do about it? By leaving your assets in a Heritage Trust for your children, you can give them complete control over their inheritance (so you're not "ruling form the grave") while at the same time proving that, when they die, whatever they didn't spend goes to your grandchildren or your other surviving children, instead of to your in-laws.

About half of all people today have a period of disability before they die. Without a plan, you risk getting the state's plan where they appoint a legal guardian for you who (1) may be someone you don't even know (2) may change you investments (3) may be unable to protect your assets by transferring them to other family members if you have to go into a nursing home, and (4) may make it exceedingly difficult to get back control of your assets if you recover from your disability.

When you set up a revocable living trust, you create a plan for disability that avoids a guardianship proceeding , puts the persons you chose in control and allows them to transfer and protect assets. Again, with a 50% disability rate, we all need to plan for it.

When you have well thought out and executed plan you actually feel better. You fell safe and secure that not matter what happens you have a plan to deal with it and you have your team in place to carry it out. This allows you to put those concern out of your mind and enjoy your life. Remember, we're worrying about it for you, so you don't have to.

Every three years we'll write to you reminding you that you have a plan with us and asking you if anything's as changed. If the law changes, we'll let you know about that too. If you don't remember whether you received your three-year letter, don't worry because we're going to send one out to all our clients this summer just to make sure.