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Beginning the conversation around estate planning can be an opportunity to center your values and take care of loved ones. While it is never easy to think of end-of-life decisions, having an estate plan in place in advance can make all the difference when it comes to creating transparency, prioritizing what is most important to you, and avoiding future challenges to your wishes.
Working with an estate planning attorney can make sure the conversation stays productive. As an impersonal advocate for your wishes, a good estate planning attorney will be able to center your goals while providing a structure to ensure that they are carried out. Pitta & Baione LLP are experienced New York estate planning attorneys dedicated to serving our clients with diligence and discretion.
What Is Estate Planning?
Nearly everyone has an estate when they pass away, regardless of their wealth or status. Estate planning creates a system that instructs your relatives and heirs about what should be done with what you have accrued during your lifetime.
Estate planning is not just for distributing possessions and wealth, however. Estate planning is also a tool to help make decisions about matters like:
- Your living will, including establishing a health care surrogate, should you become incapacitated
- Insurance policies such as long-term care insurance, disability income insurance, and life insurance policies
- Guardianship for minor children
- Transfer of your business ownership upon your retirement, disability, incapacity, or death
- Providing for family members who need protection from creditors or ex-spouses
- Structuring a trust for loved ones with special needs without disqualifying them from government benefits
- Providing privacy protections for your heirs as well as minimizing their taxes, court costs and additional legal fees after your death
- Aligning your assets with your goals, such as providing for scholarships, institutions, or charities that matter to you during your lifetime
An estate plan ensures that all these important concerns are addressed according to your wishes. Finally, in the aftermath of a loss, having an estate plan in place provides guidance or direction to your family members and loved ones during their time of grief.
What Assets Should You Consider for Your Estate Plan?
Your home, car, checking and savings accounts, furniture, collections, personal possessions, investments, and more can all be included in your estate.
You will also need to decide on beneficiaries and who gets what from your assets. This is an opportunity to prioritize, as well as take a realistic valuation of your assets. There may not be enough in your estate to account for everything you care about, but know that you can amend your plans in the future.
Estate planning should not be a one-time conversation. Ideally, estate planning takes the form of an ongoing series of updates that account for changes to your finances, family size, and makeup, as well as relevant laws and tax benefits.
Should You Include Charities in Your Estate Plan?
Charitable giving is an option to leave a legacy beyond your lifetime. Structuring charitable donations as part of your estate plan can often reduce your taxable estate and provide significant savings. Some charitable gifts can be structured to provide for family members as well as charities by setting up a managed trust.
There are several different options to include a charity in your estate plan, each of them with certain benefits as well as drawbacks. An estate planning attorney can help you consider which of the following is most appropriate for your asset allocation as well as personal goals:
- Bequests, or gifts made in your will. Bequests can be financial in nature or a donation of assets such as cars or real estate.
- Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs) allow beneficiaries, often family members, to benefit from your assets for a set period before transferring the remainder to a cause or charity.
- Charitable Lead Trusts (CLTs), which are trusts that provide for a charity up front through a fixed amount or percentage before distributing the rest of your assets to children or your heirs.
- Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) allow assets to appreciate but may also incur additional administrative costs.
- Life insurance policies that can allow charities to receive benefits as named beneficiaries.
- Private foundations are best for individuals with high net worth, as well as those who may want to take a more hands-on approach to giving, or allow a structure for future generations to remain engaged with a cause you care about.
What Is a Health Care Agent and Do You Need One?
It is highly recommended to establish a health care agent, or surrogate, whom you trust if you become incapacitated. If you have been in a devastating car accident or received an incapacitating injury, the last thing you want is confusion, hesitation, or strife between your loved ones about who should take the reins. By choosing your health care proxy in advance, you have an opportunity to express your wishes as well as ensure that you know who will be making choices on your behalf.
As long as they are over 18 years of age, you can select a family member, a close friend, or even a member of your religious group to act as your healthcare agent. In New York, if you choose a doctor or health care professional to be your proxy, it is important to note that they will not be able to act as your attendant physician at the same time to prevent a conflict of interest.
How Should You Divide Responsibilities if You Need Long-Term Care?
Long-term care strategies can be part of your estate plan to ensure that you can make the most of your time with loved ones. By designating a primary caregiver, you can be assured that you will have assistance with not only doctors’ appointments, prescriptions, and medical devices, but also with finances, setting up in-home health visits, insurance benefits, or other assisted living strategies. Your primary caregiver can also coordinate to share tasks with nearby friends, relatives, members of your religious group, or other community members.
Is an Estate Planning Trust Revocable or Irrevocable?
There are different kinds of trusts, both revocable and irrevocable. A revocable trust is changeable during a person’s lifetime. They can decide how assets are allocated, add or remove beneficiaries, and take on a more active role in this structure.
However, because of the flexibility of revocable trusts, they do not offer all the same benefits when it comes to protecting assets from creditors and sheltering the contents of the trust from federal and state estate taxes. For this reason, some estate plans choose to maximize the benefits of irrevocable trusts. Your attorney can advise you about which kind of trust is best suited to your own goals and needs.
Do I Have to Register My Estate Plan in Court?
There is no requirement to register one’s estate plan, and there is no system of registering one’s estate plan. However, surrogate’s courts generally do accept the filing of Last Will and Testaments for safekeeping even before a person’s death. An estate planning attorney can help clarify the pros and cons of filing your Will with the courts. Generally, individuals engage in estate planning with the goal of privacy, and trusts are often used to avoid filing any information with the courts.
How Can an Estate Planning Attorney Help Me?
Pitta & Baione LLP are experienced advocates for those wishing to amend their estate plans or embark on the process for the first time. We can help you maximize what you have accrued during your lifetime, protect your family and heirs, as well as create an ironclad structure to ensure that your wishes are carried out. Working with a trust and estates attorney at Pitta & Baione LLP can bring you peace of mind knowing that what you care about most will be protected even after you are gone.
Estate Planning Attorney Near Me
Our New York offices are located in downtown Manhattan in the Financial District. We are on the 28th Floor of the Equitable Life Building, catty-corner from Zuccotti Park and Trinity Church.
Talk to an Estate Planning Lawyer for Help
If you need help setting up your estate plan, making adjustments or amendments, sheltering assets in a trust, setting up a health care agent, or providing a private and structured estate distribution for your heirs, Pitta & Baione LLP can help. Our attorneys are experienced in asset protection and advocating for the needs of New Yorkers. Contact us today for a consultation.
