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Couple LCM Planning

Your Legacy

Estate Planning for the Living
Most people associate their estate plan with death. In reality, the legal term “estate” is used to refer to a person’s property – including real property (like your home), personal property (like the things in your home) and heritable property. At Hancock Legal, we encourage our clients to look to the changes that happen throughout their lives (and death is only one of those changes), and create a complete Life Change Management plan accordingly. Most of the changes in the ownership of your property will occur during your lifetime, not after your death, and your LCM plan should provide added value to those transitions. Lastly, in certain ways you are planning for the living: your loved ones and business partners who will survive you and must deal with the aftereffects of your passing.

Having a plan that addresses your property (or your estate) and what to do with it when you pass on, accomplishes several important goals:

• Control: At its best, a good plan, with the right documentation, gives you control over the disposition of your assets upon your death. More importantly, by asserting your wishes, you prevent confusion or conflict between your heirs over your intentions at the worst possible time for them – after you have left them.
• Probate Avoidance: “Probate” is the court process that handles your estate at the time that you pass, involving the court, and significant time (including the lawyer’s). Preparing the right documents in your Life Change Management plan should minimize the time it takes to resolve your estate, which will allow your loved ones to move on with their lives.
• Cost: The probate process takes time, and it is complicated. Most people engage the services of an attorney for some or all of the probate process. At Hancock Legal, we have seen first-hand how advanced preparation of the right documents will save your estate the cost of counsel, court fees and other related costs that are inevitable in the probate process.
• Privacy: Along with cost and time, the probate process is public. This means that your personal finances, your decisions about your estate and your family situation are made a part of the public record. This is not what most of us want for our final wishes, and a plan with appropriate documents will assure your privacy and that of your loved ones.

Probate
Even the best of plans get mislaid, and many of us have family who may not have any plan at all. The probate process is a lengthy legal process that transfers ownership of a decedent’s property to his or her intended heirs. (The “decedent” is the person who has died.) We represent heirs in their petition to the local court to be appointed as the personal representative of the estate and other heirs or interested parties in a contested probate.

Probate can range from very simple to very complex, depending on a variety of factors. An estate that consists of a small checking account, with only one heir, will be easy and cheap to administer. An estate with many heirs and a complex portfolio of assets is more difficult to administer. Tax planning for complex estates is a tricky issue; there are some post-mortem planning techniques that can be used to achieve favorable tax consequences. The attorneys at Hancock Legal are familiar with these techniques, and actively work with personal representatives and beneficiaries to coordinate a favorable tax outcome.

At Hancock Legal, we believe that the administration of an estate or trust should be efficient, affordable, and tax sensitive. Usually, legal fees that result from administration are paid out of the estate or trust itself, which reduces the potential value for heirs and beneficiaries. We are sensitive to this issue and offer a flexible fee structure that allows us to calibrate our services to our clients’ needs and cost restraints.

Some fiduciary clients are very “hands-on” and wish to personally perform as much of the administration as possible. For these clients, we provide ancillary support and guidance as needed and our fees are reduced to reflect the degree of our involvement.

Other clients prefer to delegate many of the technical tasks to us, and we are happy to perform them. We provide flexible service arrangements in order to match our performance and fees to our clients’ needs and expectations.

Ethical Wills
At the end of your life, what happens with your money may not be your only legacy. An ethical will is a document that some of our clients prepare as part of their legacy. Ethical wills can contain many things; one of the most common elements is a description of certain values that you wish to pass down to your descendants. Some people include pieces of wisdom that they have learned in life, or certain wishes that they have for their family. An ethical will can also be used to describe the history of your family, to help your descendants feel more connected with their past. If written well, an ethical will can add a human or spiritual element to the financial assets that you leave behind, and can provide a final source of comfort for your family in their time of grief.