Estate Planning
A well-drafted and complete estate plan, whether it be a Will or a Revocable Living Trust, will ensure that your family and assets are protected should something happen to you. If you have an estate plan that hasn’t been reviewed in years, or you have recently relocated to Arizona, it is likely that an update is in order.
Understanding the Value of Estate Planning
Safeguarding Your Future
The thought of what will happen to your assets and property after you pass away may seem too difficult to think about, but every knowledgeable probate attorney—or anyone who has experienced the hassle of property distribution—can tell you that the sooner you act, the better it is for everyone involved.
Care Powers of Attorney, Living Wills, and Financial Powers of Attorney, and other estate planning techniques. We want to ensure that your personal matters and financial affairs are appropriately structured.
If you own property, have children, have recently been married or divorced or wish to make a special bequest to a friend, relative, or charity, you should create or update your Will and/or Trust. If you are new to Arizona or your Will or other estate planning documents were created in another state, you may want to have your documents reviewed for compliance with Arizona law.
Typically, clients seek to avoid probate. A Revocable Living Trust will often avoid probate but only if it is properly funded. Funding is the process of transferring ownership of your assets from your name into your trust. Much like a Will, a Revocable Living Trust instructs what is to happen to your property in the event of death. While alive, you remain in control and can change the trust at any time. Setting up a Trust allows you to avoid the expense and delay of probate. A Revocable Living Trust also allows you to do disability planning so that your wishes will be followed should you become incapacitated. By having your applicable assets titled in the name of your Revocable Living Trust, you may not have to rely upon a durable power of attorney and whether or not a financial institution will accept it.
Our attorneys can also draft Health Care Powers of Attorney, Living Wills, and Financial Powers of Attorney to provide instructions for family and medical personnel in case of your incapacity.
Our Strategy
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Planning
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Customizing
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Securing
Frequently Asked Questions
- Revocable Living Trust
- Certification of Trust
- Durable Power of Attorney for Management of Property and Personal Affairs
- Health Care Power of Attorney and Mental Health Care Power of Attorney
- Pour-Over Will
- Personal Property Memorandum
- Assignment of Personal Property
- Deed
- Last Will and Testament
- Durable Power of Attorney for Management of Property and Personal Affairs
- Health Care Power of Attorney and Mental Health Care Power of Attorney
- Living Will
- Personal Property Memorandum
- Beneficiary Deed
An estate plan is much more that just a Will. In order to best protect you, there are documents such as Health Care and Financial Powers of Attorney which provide you with safety measures during your lifetime, while there are documents like a Living Will which help with end-of-life decisions. If you wish to avoid Probate, a Revocable Living Trust may be the best option for you. Because of the complexities of making sure that you have a complete plan, it is best to speak with our attorneys.
Yes, the probate court is open to the public. Anyone for any reason can examine most of the court files and see your will and any codicils to it after your death.
Congratulations, you’ve made the decision to do an estate plan. That’s a major, major step. Many people fight that for a long time. They think, well, I’m not going to die, or I can put it up tomorrow I’m not going to die today. But you’ve made a decision you need to do a Will, but you’re considering doing it yourself. We’re often asked, well, can I do it myself? And the answer is, legally, you can. I think the better question is, should you?
There is a lot of complications regarding a properly drafted estate plan. I could tell stories, after story, after story of litigation cases we’ve been involved with where the documents have been drafted by either the person themselves, by a non-lawyer paralegal, or they’ve utilized a form and we have litigated those cases for years and years, because of various defects in the documents that they’ve used. Legally you can do it yourself, but you probably shouldn’t. I know that there’s three wires inside of an electrical wire, and one of them is the ground, but I’m not sure which, and I probably should not do the electrical wiring in my house. I should probably get someone who is qualified and experienced, an electrician, to run the wires in my house. If it’s wrong, it can be devastating. If I were to wire my house myself and get something wrong, I could end up with a fire, burn my whole house down, possibly kill myself, and my family. The same principles apply in your estate plan. Your estate plan is a critical step in you being responsible to protect your loved ones so that everything falls into place. If you were to die, everything’s in order. If you don’t do that correctly, you actually can create tremendous turmoil, expense, controversy and conflict amongst family members that you never wanted to happen, and you never envisioned would happen.
It is our recommendation that if you’ve made the decision to do an estate plan, you should contact a qualified and experienced estate planning attorney and consult with them. Tell them what you want to happen and see what they say. Only an Arizona licensed lawyer can provide you legal advice (not even a certified document preparer), and a qualified and experienced estate planning attorney can take what you want and draft documents that are crystal clear, make sure what you want happens, if anything were to happen to you, including your untimely death. So, the short or the long answer; I guess that was a long answer, but the short answer is you can do it yourself, but you shouldn’t.
A will and revocable trust are similar in that they both allow you to specify exactly how you want your property distributed to your heirs after you pass away. However, there are major differences that everyone should know, the following being the most important:
- Your Last Will and Testament directs probate assets to specific heirs through the probate process;
- While the revocable living trust directs trust assets to specific beneficiaries without the necessity of probate in the first place.
When creating your estate plan, you should consider whether you want a will based estate plan or a trust based estate plan. The general rules for these types of plans are as follows:
A will based estate plan is good for:
- People who want to spend as little money as possible at this point in time;
- People with no real property;
- People with very simple estates;
- People with one heir;
- People who do not care as much about avoiding probate for their heirs.
A trust based estate plan is best for:
- People who want to avoid probate;
- More complicated estates;
- People with more assets, including real property;
- People willing to spend more money to make things easier for their children help save them more money and time;
- People with real property in other states.
