San Jose Estate Planning Attorneys
If you own assets of any type, including personal items or real estate, you have an estate. It’s made up of everything you own, including the money you’ve worked hard for and saved for years, life insurance investments you’ve made, and even collectible items. No matter if the item has monetary or sentimental value, it’s essential to protect those items. That’s what an estate plan can do for you – provide you with more control and protection over the items you’ve worked to build, minimizing the risk that they are taxed heavily or given to the wrong people. Our San Jose estate planning attorneys can work with you to craft a plan to ensure you remain in control even after your death.
Let Steburg Law Firm support you throughout the creation of an estate plan. We’ll work with you to create the confidence you need to know your loved ones and wishes are cared for.
Securing Your Legacy (What Do Estate Planning Attorneys Do?)
An estate planning attorney provides you with tools to help you communicate your wishes for your estate and what should happen to it once you die. There are legal restrictions – you cannot give away what you don’t own, or someone else has claim to – but with the help of our San Jose estate planning attorneys, you can create a plan that often addresses most of your needs and desires. If you fail to do that, all you’ve worked for is left behind without serving the purpose you want it to.
Estate planning attorneys work with you to secure your legacy. What is your goal? What do you wish to happen to these items? What do you want to leave behind?
What Is the Benefit of an Estate Planning Attorney?
One of the best things about estate planning attorneys is that they can provide a wide range of tools and resources for you to use. That means you have countless tools available to help you achieve the goals you desire. This can offer many benefits to you, including:
Naming a guardian to care for your minor or dependent adult children
- Determine who will make decisions and settle your estate for you
- Outline who will receive the inheritance for you, perhaps putting in place restrictions for a child that may not spend well
- Creating a way to care for your child with special needs without putting their governmental benefits at risk
- Planning for your long term medical care needs
- Outlining your wishes for end of life
In short, you remain in control over many of these decisions with an estate plan, but you don’t if you lack a plan before you die or become incapacitated and unable to make decisions.
Parts of an Effective Estate Plan
There are a number of components that make up an estate plan that your estate planning attorney can create for you. Here’s a look at some of the most commonly used components.
Will
A will is a guiding component of an estate plan, allowing you to document where your personal belongings will go after your death. It can also provide information about who will care for your minor children and outline any other decision-making appointments you create, such as who will be the executor of your will and estate.
Living Will
A living will is a tool that allows you to outline your wishes about specific health care treatments and medical care that you wish to have or no longer have when you cannot make your own medical decisions. This could be due to becoming unconscious or suffering a stroke. It may also be used to outline your wishes about organ donation.
Power of Attorney
Naming a durable power of attorney ensures you have a person who understands your wishes and will honor them available to you. This legal document names an agent who is given the legal authority to make decisions for you if you cannot do so on your own. The agent is to make decisions based on your wishes, not their own, such as deciding on the medical care you receive or how your bills will be paid if you cannot handle those tasks on your own.
Advance Health Care Directives
Many people have very strong wishes about how their health care will be managed over time. An advanced health care directive is a legal tool that outlines those wishes. You can use it to let doctors, as well as family, know what your decisions are about how many life-saving measures they should take for you. It may also inform these people about the types of medical care and treatment you want or do not want.
Comprehensive Estate Planning Adds:
There are additional tools available that may help some people that your San Jose estate planning attorneys can help you with creating.
Trusts
Trusts are a way for you to provide someone else with legal title over specific assets named within the trust. When you die, the trust assets pass on to the person you’ve named as beneficiary, but there are often restrictions or stipulations that must be met. You can make a trust administrator manage the assets within the trust on an ongoing basis creating terms for how those assets are distributed and managed.
Family LLPs
Family Limited Partnerships are a tool to help you move your wealth from one generation to the next with limited overall risk to those assets. It is a type of holding company that’s created by at least two people within a family and often helps to manage the family’s real estate, business, or other high-value assets.
Charitable Planning
What goes do you have for leaving funds behind for charity? Charitable planning allows you to create a clear path to leaving behind some assets to the charities you name specifically, allowing you to minimize the risk of your wishes not coming true.
Insurance Planning
Insurance planning is a valuable tool for those who want to create a way to fund some of their estate plan. For example, a life insurance policy can help to fund a trust for your minor children should you die unexpectedly. Your attorney can help you create a plan for how to use insurance products to help fund many of the decisions you make.
LTC Planning
Since many people are living longer than ever, long term care planning is becoming a very important component of estate planning. This is a way for you to outline your wishes for long-term care and to create a way to pay for them.
Final Expenses
The final expenses for your death may be higher than you realize. Final expenses may be covered by a specific life insurance policy or funded through other means set up by your attorneys.
Retirement Account Planning
You also have to consider retirement planning, especially as new laws are put in place, like the SECURE Act. This law outlines how you can save money for retirement and later use those funds.
Buy-Sell / Succession Planning for Businesses
What happens to your business if you die? Having a succession plan may be vital to ensuring your business can continue and thrive. Work with your estate planning attorneys to help you create a plan for how your business will continue to operate or be passed down.
How to Select the Best San Jose Estate Planning Attorneys for Your Current Situation and Future Needs
Steburg Law Firm provides you with access to all of the tools you need to create an effective estate plan for your future and your family. When choosing an attorney for this, be sure to consider their:
- Experience
- Ability to provide a wide range of legally binding tools
- Availability to meet with you and manage your needs
- Level of knowledge about high-wealth planning
- Personality and willingness to put your needs first
- How the Steburg Law Firm Can Help
When you contact Steburg Law Firm, we’ll work hard to ensure your wishes are fully outlined and legally protected to the letter of the law. Without a doubt, we want to give you the tools you need to create an estate plan that gives you peace of mind. Contact us to set up a consultation to discuss your options.
