When people in North Dakota and Minnesota start estate planning, they can count on their estate planning lawyer to guide them through the entire process. The choices you make with your plan will have to be protected by creating the appropriate device that fit your needs. While your attorney will help you determine what choices might be best for your situation, there are some tips you will want to keep in mind as you go about the process.
Estate Planning Tip 1. Everyone Needs an Estate Plan Because Everyone Has an Estate
Some people are ambivalent about the whole estate planning process because they don’t believe that it’s important. After all, if you are not wealthy, a senior, or don’t have a family, what need is there to have an estate plan?
While estate planning might seem like something that only certain people need to do, the legal reality is much different. Everyone, regardless of individual circumstances, has an estate and has a need to develop an estate plan.
Your estate plan will essentially allow you to make certain types of decisions that, if you don’t make them yourself, will have to be made for you by someone else. That someone else can be preexisting laws, a judge, or your family members.
Estate Planning Tip 2. Your incapacity plan might never be used, but you still need it.
Another important piece of estate planning is the development of an incapacity plan. Through your incapacity plan you can address what you want to happen should you lose your ability to make decisions.
Unlike estate plans, incapacity plans are not something that everyone will eventually need because not everyone will become incapacitated. However, should you one day find yourself in need of an incapacity plan and don’t have one prepared, you will not be able to create it later. Moreover, becoming incapacitated and not having a plan in place will make things much more difficult for your family and loved ones.
Estate Planning Tip 3. An estate plan is not permanent.
It’s important to remember that the various tools you create as a part of the estate planning process are not written in stone. You are always free to go back and change your choices if you like.
Not only that, but many estate planning choices you make now may not reflect your desires in the future. Further, there are changes in the law, individual circumstances, and other factors that can prompt you to want to make changes to a plan you’ve made. This is why it’s so important to, after you’ve made your plan, review it periodically.
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