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Whether you are married or not, if you are involved in a committed partnership with another individual, estate planning is about so much more than planning for death—it’s about planning for life and ensuring your beloved will be protected and provided for no matter what happens to you. And if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, estate planning is even more critical, especially if you have complex family relationships.

Although same-gender marriage is legally recognized in all 50 states, long-held prejudice at both the political and family level continues to create complications for both married and unmarried same-gender couples. Indeed, while the federal government recognizes same-gender marriage, there are plenty of cities, businesses, and people who still refuse to recognize these unions. Moreover, a recent survey found that roughly four of every 10 LGBTQ adults say they have been rejected by a family member because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

As we discussed last week in part one, such discrimination can create unique estate planning challenges, and regardless of your marriage status, if you are an LGTBQ adult in a committed partnership, you should be aware of several issues that can affect your planning strategies. Specifically, we discussed how relying on a will alone may not provide sufficient protection for your partner/spouse, and we explained why incapacity planning is particularly crucial if you want your partner/spouse to have a say in your medical treatment and the ability to access and manage your assets in the event you are hit with a debilitating illness or injury.

Here we’ll address the final issue you should be aware of when creating your estate plan—securing parental rights for the non-biological parent of minor children.

3. Estate Planning Offers Alternative to Adoption

Although married same-gender couples now enjoy nearly all of the same rights as opposite-gender couples, there is one key right that’s still up in the air—the automatic right to be legal parents. While parental rights are of course automatically bestowed upon the biological parent of a child, the non-biological spouse/parent still faces a number of challenges when it comes to obtaining full parental rights.

Since the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the specific issue of the parental rights of the non-biological parent in a same-gender marriage, there is a tangled, often contradictory, web of state laws governing such rights. If you are a married same-gender couple, for example, some states consider the non-biological partner a legal parent based solely on your marriage, while other states do not.

Given the conflicting nature of state laws, many same-gender couples have turned to second-parent adoption to gain parental rights for the non-biological parent, since the Supreme Court has ruled that the adoptive parental rights granted in one state must be respected in all states. However, it can be extremely difficult for same-gender couples to adopt. In fact, 11 states currently permit state-licensed adoption agencies to refuse to grant an adoption, if doing so violates the agency’s religious beliefs. In other states, the law specifically forbids such discrimination, but given the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, even those laws are susceptible to legal challenge.

In that case, the city canceled a contract with Catholic Social Services (CSS), a taxpayer-funded, faith-based foster care and adoption agency, after it refused child placement with LGBTQ families in violation of a city law prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. CSS sued the city, arguing that requiring it to follow the nondiscrimination policy violated its free exercise of religion since working with same-sex couples would go against its religious opposition to homosexuality.

In a unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of CSS and found Philadelphia’s contract with CSS to be unenforceable. However, the ruling was narrowly focused on specific contractual language, and it does not create a broad free-exercise exemption from nondiscrimination laws, as many in the LGBTQ+ community feared.

That said, the Fulton case and others like it that are sure to follow, demonstrate that when it comes to same-gender couples seeking parental rights, second-parent adoption is not a panacea. Fortunately, same-gender couples do have an alternative to adoption—estate planning. Indeed, using a variety of estate planning strategies, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can provide a non-biological, same-gender parent with nearly all parental rights, even without formal adoption.

Starting with our Kids Protection Plan®, LGBTQ couples can name the non-biological parent as the child’s legal guardian, both for the short-term and the long-term, while confidentially excluding anyone the biological parent thinks may challenge their wishes. In this way, if the biological parent becomes incapacitated or dies, their wishes are clearly stated, so the court can do what the parent would’ve wanted and keep the child in the non-biological parent’s care.

Beyond that, there are several other estate planning vehicles—living trusts, power of attorney, and health care directives—we can use to grant the non-biological parent additional rights. We can also create “co-parenting agreements,” which are legal agreements that stipulate exactly how the child will be raised, what responsibility each partner has toward the child, and what kind of rights would exist if the couple splits or gets divorced.

Experience You Can Rely On

In light of these issues, it’s vital for LGBTQ+ couples, especially those with children, to always work with experienced estate planning lawyers, and avoid using generic online documents at all costs. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we have the experience of creating plans specifically designed to prevent your plan from being challenged in court by family members who disagree with your relationship.

Indeed, with the proper planning, we can ensure that no matter what happens to you, your partner and family will be protected and provided for in the exact manner you wish, rather than being stuck in a financial and legal nightmare. What’s more, our specialized planning services can help ensure that non-biological parents in LBGT partnerships have as many parental rights as possible, without resorting to second-parent adoption. Contact us, your Personal Family Lawyer® today to get started with a Family Wealth Planning Session.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.

Whether you are married or in a committed partnership, estate planning is about much more than planning for death—it’s about planning for life. It’s the way to ensure your beloved will be protected and provided for in the event of your death or incapacity. Especially if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, estate planning is even more critical.

Although same-gender marriage is legally recognized in all 50 states, long-held prejudice at both the political and family level continues to create complications for both married and unmarried same-gender couples. For example, suppose you have family members who are opposed to your marriage. In that case, your estate plan may be more likely to be disputed or even sabotaged by unsupportive relatives. This could mean that family members are more likely to contest your wishes, or it might result in custody battles over non-biological children in the event of the biological parent’s death.

Unsupportive family members may even try to block the ability of your partner to make medical decisions on your behalf should you become incapacitated by accident or illness. Even worse, your family members could try to kick your partner out of a shared home, if you are in an accident or fall ill, or they may even block your partner from seeing you if you require hospitalization.

Additionally, if you and your partner are unmarried, your partner would have no rights or protections should you become incapacitated or die without any planning in place, which leaves your partner vulnerable to several potentially dire risks.

Given these issues, if you are in a committed partnership, you should be aware of several unique considerations regarding your estate plan. While you should meet with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, to address your specific circumstances, here are three of the most pressing concerns to keep in mind.

1. A Will Alone Might Not Be Enough

Suppose you’re unmarried and die without any estate plan. In that case, your property will be shared with your surviving family members according to your state’s laws through intestate succession. The state’s laws would not protect your unmarried partner, so if you want your partner to receive any of your assets upon your death, you need to—at the very least—create a will.

However, having an estate plan that consists solely of a will often doesn’t provide sufficient protection for your spouse/partner, and we often recommend that same-gender couples—even those who are married—create both a will and a trust. Although a will is a foundational part of nearly every estate plan, for a variety of reasons, having just a will could leave your partner/spouse at risk.

Most importantly, a will does not work in the event of your incapacity, which could happen at any time before your death. Should you become incapacitated with only a will in place, your partner/spouse may not have access to needed funds to pay bills, or they might even be kicked out of your home by a family member appointed as your guardian during your incapacity.

Furthermore, upon your death, a will is required to go through the often long, costly, and potentially conflict-ridden court process known as probate. In contrast, assets that are properly titled in the name of your trust would pass directly to your partner/spouse upon your death, without the need for probate or any court intervention.

If your relationship is not supported by one or both families, avoiding probate is especially important. If a family member doesn’t support your relationship, they are more likely to contest your will during probate.

If your will is successfully contested, this could prevent your surviving partner/spouse from receiving assets you left in your will. The process of contesting is extremely time-consuming, costly, and emotionally draining for your surviving partner/spouse.

Typically, when an attorney drafts your will, it is not set up to protect your assets after they are passed to your partner/spouse from creditors or lawsuits. However, leaving your assets in a trust that your partner/spouse can control would ensure the assets are protected from creditors, future relationships, and/or unexpected lawsuits.

2. Incapacity Planning is Especially Vital

As we touched on earlier, estate planning is not just about planning for your eventual death; it’s also about planning for your potential incapacity due to injury or illness. Proactive estate planning allows you to name the person (or persons) you would want to make your healthcare, legal, and financial decisions for you if you are incapacitated and unable to make such decisions yourself through a medical power of attorney.

If you haven’t planned for incapacity, the choice is then left to the court to appoint the person(s) to make these decisions on your behalf. If you’re unmarried and the court appoints one of your relatives as your guardian, your family could leave your partner totally out of the medical decision-making process and even deny them the right to visit you in the hospital. And even if you are married, it’s not guaranteed that your spouse would have the ultimate legal authority to make such decisions.

Though the court typically gives spouses priority as guardians, this isn’t always the case, especially if unsupportive family members challenge the issue in court. To ensure your partner/spouse has the ability to make these decisions for you, you must grant them the legal authority to do so using medical power of attorney and durable financial power of attorney.

A durable financial power of attorney gives your spouse the authority to manage your financial, legal, and business affairs, including paying your bills and taxes, running your business, selling your home, as well as managing your banking and investment accounts.

In addition to creating a will and trust, be sure to also create a living will, so that your spouse will know exactly how you want your medical care managed in the event of your incapacity, particularly at the end of life. Finally, don’t forget to provide your partner/spouse with HIPAA authorization within the medical power of attorney, so they will have access to your medical records to make educated decisions about your care.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can support you in putting in place a robust estate plan that will ensure that your partner/spouse has the maximum rights possible if you are ever struck by a debilitating accident or illness.

Next week, in part two, we’ll discuss the final estate planning consideration for LGBTQ couples—securing parental rights for the non-biological parent of minor children.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.

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When you are a kid, finding a suitable gift for Father’s Day can be a struggle. You want to get Dad something he’ll enjoy, but few young people can afford a new set of golf clubs or a shiny new grill, so you end up settling once again for the standard necktie and socks.

And even after you become an adult, that struggle for the perfect Father’s Day gift often continues, albeit in a slightly different way. When it comes to expressing your love and appreciation for everything Dad has done, more “stuff” doesn’t cut it.

If your father is like most, he’d tell you that the greatest gift you could give him would be for you to abide by the values and principles he taught you and share them with your children.

We may go to great lengths to protect and pass on our family’s financial wealth. Still, very few of us take the time to even document, much less preserve, our family’s legacy. The stories, values, insights, and life lessons of our parents, grandparents, and those who came before them— are typically lost forever when a beloved father figure passes away.

With this in mind, give your father a tribute to the role he has played in your life by preserving his legacy for generations to come with a Family Wealth Legacy Passage.

Family Wealth Legacy Passages: Sharing Your Family’s Story

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we know that estate planning isn’t just about protecting and passing on your financial wealth and tangible assets when you die. When done right, estate planning supports you to pass down the most precious assets of all—your life stories, lessons, insights, and values, intentionally.

We do this with a unique service we’ve developed known as Family Wealth Legacy Passages. We will personally guide your father to create a customized recording to share his most insightful memories and experiences. We will provide you with the recording digitally to rest assured it will survive long after he—and even after you—are gone. The Family Wealth Legacy Passage is at no additional cost to you since it is part of each estate plan.

Including Family Wealth Legacy Passages in your estate planning ensures the most valuable assets never get lost and the process of documenting them is as easy and convenient as possible. We use a series of helpful questions and prompts, which makes the process both easy and enjoyable.

Many of our clients tell us that going through this process helps rekindle life moments they would otherwise not share with their loved ones during their lives. This unique process can enrich your family with something far more valuable than material wealth. After the interview, many of our clients have told us they feel as if they’ve become better, more conscious parents along the way. And the best part is, it takes less than an hour.

In the end, your family’s most precious wealth is not money, but the memories you make, the values you instill, and the insights and lessons you hand down. If left to chance, these assets are likely to be lost forever.

Create A Lasting Legacy

During the month of celebrating Dad, take this opportunity to ensure that all of the wisdom and experience your father has gained during his life won’t be lost once he’s gone. Even if your father is no longer with us, perhaps you have a figure in your life that you can honor with this process. No matter the father figure in your life, meeting with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, will benefit future generations. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.

With the arrival of summer, young people across the country are about to reach a key milestone: high school graduation. If you have a child claiming their diploma, now is the time to prepare them for life after leaving the nest.

Graduating high school is a significant accomplishment. However, it comes with serious responsibilities that your child probably isn’t thinking much about right now. Once your child turns 18, they become a legal adult, and specific areas of their lives that were once under your control will be solely their responsibility.

While your child will now be a legal adult, you still have essential parental duties. Yet, if you don’t support your child to step into adulthood with legal documents to help both of you, it can be challenging and costly for you to help them in the event of an emergency.

For instance, should your child get into a severe car accident and require hospitalization, you would no longer have the automatic authority to make decisions about his or her medical treatment or handle their financial matters. In fact, without legal documentation, you wouldn’t even be able to access his or her medical records or bank accounts without a court order.

To address this vulnerability and ensure your family never gets stuck in an unnecessary court process, before your kids move out or head off to college, have a conversation about estate planning and have them sign the following three documents.

1. Medical Power of Attorney

The first document your child needs is a medical power of attorney. A medical power of attorney is an advance healthcare directive that allows your child to grant you (or someone else) the immediate legal authority to make healthcare decisions on their behalf if they become incapacitated and are unable to make decisions for themselves.

For example, the medical power of attorney would allow you to decide about your child’s medical treatment if he or she is knocked unconscious in a car accident or falls into a coma due to a debilitating illness.

Without a medical power of attorney in place, if your child suffers a severe accident or illness that requires hospitalization and you need access to their medical records to make decisions about their treatment, you’d have to petition the court to become their legal guardian. While a parent is typically the court’s first choice for a guardian, the guardianship process can be slow and expensive.

And due to HIPAA laws, once your child becomes 18, no one—not even parents—is legally authorized to access his or her medical records without prior written permission. But an adequately drafted medical power of attorney will include a signed HIPAA authorization, so you can immediately access their medical records to make informed decisions about their treatment.

2. Living Will

While the medical power of attorney allows you to make healthcare decisions on your child’s behalf during their incapacity, a living will is an advance directive that provides specific guidance. These are specifications on how your child’s medical decisions should be made, particularly at the end of life.

For example, a living will allows your child to advise if and when they want life support removed should they ever require it. In addition to documenting how your child requests their medical care managed, a living will also include instructions about who should visit them in the hospital and even what kind of food they would want to have provided. For example, if your child is a vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, or takes specific supplements. These are all things that should be considered and recorded in their living will.

Finally, speak with your child about the unique medical decisions related to the coronavirus, particularly in intubation, ventilators, and experimental medications. Your child’s quality of life decisions should also be outlined in their living will. You can find in our previous article, COVID-19 Highlights Critical Need for Advance Healthcare Directives.

3. Durable Financial Power of Attorney

Should your child become incapacitated, you may also need the ability to access and manage their finances, and this requires your child to grant you durable financial power of attorney.

Durable financial power of attorney gives you the authority to manage their financial and legal matters, such as paying their tuition, applying for student loans, paying their rent, negotiating (or re-negotiating) a lease, managing their bank accounts, and collecting government benefits if necessary. Without this document, you’ll have to petition the court for such authority.

Start Adulthood The Right Way

Before your kids head out into the world, make sure they’ve got the proper planning in place. By doing so, you are modeling good financial stewardship and setting them up right from the start. Financial and legal illiteracy is an epidemic that you can quickly address, starting with yourself and your own family.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we can not only help you create these vital documents, but we can also facilitate a family meeting to discuss the importance of planning. We will begin what we hope will be a life-long relationship with your children as they take this crucial first step into adulthood. Contact us today to ensure that if your child ever does need your help, you’ll have the legal authority to provide it.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.

Meredith Andersen first discovered her passion for real estate after her husband read Flipping Houses for Dummies. At the time, Meredith and her husband were living on a sailboat off the coast of Mexico. They originally returned to the states to flip houses with the ultimate goal of collecting passive income to put towards future sailing adventures. And while Meredith’s dream of permanently living at sea never materialized, she nevertheless developed a love for real estate that has stuck with her to this day.

After entering the real estate world, Meredith was originally working 24/7. She explains that this wasn’t a burden for her, since she truly enjoys what she does. However, once she started building a family, it became harder for her to balance real estate responsibilities with raising her kids. Meredith found a solution in building out her team, which now consists of four agents and a full time administrative assistant. Meredith describes this transition as entering a new season of her life. While she started in a season of full-time work mode, she has since moved to a season of leadership, in which she can help her agents get what they need to thrive AND take care of her two young kids. Meredith’s number one tip for working moms is to accept that life is a journey of balancing rather than finding finite balance. Viewing this balancing process as active and ongoing has helped relieve a lot of pressure for Meredith as she navigates the challenges of working motherhood.

Meredith not only helps her clients buy and sell properties, but she also capitalizes on the benefits of real estate investment in her own life. When asked why real estate is a good investment for families, Meredith explains that real estate pays you in three ways: (1) equity, (2) passive income, and (3) tax write offs. She urges listeners to find a real estate agent they like, trust, and who knows the area well before entering the market. Tune into this week’s episode of The Working Moms Podcast to learn more about Meredith’s career in real estate, her recommendations for real estate investors, and her tips for working moms trying to achieve more balance in their lives.

Quotes:

• “There’s a saying that you’re not trying to go for a completely balanced life. It’s not balanced; you’re balancing….You’re never going to be to this point where it’s done and I’m there. You kind of have that theory in your head sometimes or it’s kind of like you’re reaching for this unattainable ‘balanced.’ So I liked that idea that it’s ok…that I’m always balancing the things that I want to see in my life.” (0:42-1:22)
• “I was working basically 24/7….It was because I love it. I love what I do, I want to hustle, and I want to grow and help people. So I found it really challenging because I have all that desire and I have all that drive and when you become a mom, there’s a sense of, ‘Do I still get to have those things? Am I still allowed to have that much drive and that much desire because I have these girls that depend on me now?” (10:16-10:45)
• “I’m really passionate about helping people figure out what it is they want, realize that they deserve what they want (because a lot of times that’s a big hurdle – feeling deserving of everything that you want), and then getting it.” (24:02-24:20)

Links Mentioned:

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/theworkingmoms

Pamela Maass on Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamela-maass/

Law Mother Website:

https://www.lawmother.com

Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing

As we head into the peak of wedding season, if you are a newlywed or are about to tie the knot, add “estate planning” to your do list. And yes, we imagine that at this happiest time of your life, planning for your potential incapacity and eventual death is probably the farthest thing from your mind, but getting it handled as part of your wedding planning is the greatest gift you can give your soon-to-be spouse.

First, be aware of the impact of doing nothing. If you were to become hospitalized for any reason prior to your wedding day, the person you love most in the world would not have the legal authority to make your medical decisions and may not even have the authority to see you in the hospital. Your beloved would have no access to your bank accounts and could even be put into a position of having to move out of your shared home abruptly in the event of your death.

Indeed, once your marriage is official, your relationship becomes entirely different from both a legal and financial perspective. With this in mind, last week in part one, we discussed the first three of six essential items you need to address in your plan, and here we cover the final three.

4. Durable Financial Power of Attorney

As we touched on last week in part one, estate planning is not just about planning for what happens when you die. It is equally important—if not even more so—to plan for your potential incapacity due to a serious accident or illness.

If you become incapacitated and have not legally named someone to handle your financial and legal interests, your spouse would have to petition the court to be appointed as your guardian or conservator to handle your affairs. Though your spouse would typically be given priority, this is not always the case, and the court could choose someone else.

And the person the court appoints could be a family member you would never want having control over your life, or it could even be a crooked professional guardian, who would charge exorbitant fees, keep you isolated from your family, and sell off your assets for their own benefit. In any case, if you have not chosen someone to make your financial and legal decisions in the event of your incapacity, the court will choose for you.

To ensure your spouse has the ability to make these decisions, you should create a power of attorney documents to give him or her this legal authority. You actually need two of these documents, and the first one is a durable financial power of attorney. A durable financial power of attorney would grant your spouse the immediate authority to manage your financial, legal, and business affairs in the event of your incapacity.

With a durable financial power of attorney, your spouse would have a broad range of powers to handle things like paying your bills and taxes, running your business, collecting government benefits, and selling your home, as well as managing your banking and investment accounts. Granting durable financial power of attorney is especially important if you live together before you get married because, without it, the person named by the court could legally force your soon-to-be spouse out with little to no notice, leaving your beloved homeless.

The second document you will need is a medical power of attorney, which we will discuss next.

5. Medical Power of Attorney and Living Will

In addition to the durable financial power of attorney, you will also need to create a medical power of attorney. A medical power of attorney is an advance healthcare directive that would give your spouse (or someone else) the immediate legal authority to make decisions about your healthcare and medical treatment should you become incapacitated and unable to make those decisions for yourself.

For example, a medical power of attorney would allow your spouse to make decisions about your medical treatment if you are in a serious car accident or hospitalized with a debilitating illness. Without a medical power of attorney in place, your spouse would have to petition the court to become your legal guardian.

As we discussed last week, even though your spouse is generally the court’s first choice for guardian, you should spare your spouse the time, money, and trauma involved with the guardianship process by creating a medical power of attorney and naming him or her as your agent.

While a medical power of attorney allows your spouse to make healthcare decisions on your behalf during your incapacity, a living will is an advance directive that explains how you would want your medical care handled, particularly at the end of life. A medical power of attorney and a living will work closely together, and for this reason, they are sometimes combined into a single document.

Within the terms of your living will, you can spell out things, such as if and when you would want life support removed should you ever require it, whether you would want hydration and nutrition supplied, and even what kind of food you want and who can visit you in the hospital.

One tragic example of just how nightmarish things can become in the event you are incapacitated without advance directives in place is the case of Florida’s Terry Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a vegetative state after suffering a heart attack at age 26. Because she had neither a medical power of attorney nor a living will Schiavo’s young husband fought her parents in court for years for permission to remove her from life support, and the resulting litigation made news headlines around the world and exposed a deep divide among Americans over the right-to-die movement.

6. Name Legal Guardians For Your Minor Children

If either you or your spouse has minor children from a prior relationship, or if you are planning to have kids of your own soon, it is imperative that you select and legally document long-term guardians for your children. Guardians are people legally named to care for your children in the event something should happen to you and your spouse.

And do not assume that just because you have named godparents or have grandparents living nearby that is enough. You must name guardians in a legal document, or you risk creating needless conflict and a long, expensive court process for your loved ones.

When working with us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, naming legal guardians for your kids could not be any easier or more convenient. Indeed, creating the legal documents that will ensure your children will be raised to adulthood by the people you trust most and are never placed in the care of strangers (even temporarily) is one of our specialties. And we accomplish this using our comprehensive system called the Kids Protection Plan®.

The Kids Protection Plan® provides you with all of the legal planning tools needed to make sure there is never a question about who will take care of your kids if you and your spouse are in an accident or suffer some other life-threatening emergency. Even if you have already named guardians for your kids in your will, either on your own or with the help of a lawyer, we often find that these plans contain at least one of six common mistakes that can leave your kids at risk.

This happens because most lawyers are not trained to understand exactly what is necessary for planning and ensuring the well-being and care of minor children. However, all Personal Family Lawyers® have been trained by the author of the best-selling book, Wear Clean Underwear!: A Fast, Fun, Friendly, and Essential Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents, on legal planning for the unique needs of families with minor children at home.

Best of all, we have created an easy-to-use (and 100% free) website you can visit right now to take the first steps to create legal documents naming the long-term guardians you would want to care for your children if you could not. Do it here now.

From there, you can schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session™ with us where we will put the full Kids Protection Plan® in place, and determine if there is anything else you might need to ensure the well-being and care of your children no matter what happens.

Do not wait to take care of this urgent matter. In fact, if you have minor children, your number-one planning priority should be naming legal guardians to care for your children should anything happen to you. And if you need any help with this process, reach out to us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, and we will be glad to walk you through it.

A Trusted Advisor For Your New Family

Getting married is an exciting first step for your new family, and you should start things off right by getting your estate plan properly prepared. But here is the thing about estate planning—it is not just about creating a set of documents and then filing them away in a drawer and never looking at them again until something happens.

Like your family, your planning needs are constantly evolving, so you must ensure your plan is regularly updated as your assets, family situation, and the laws change. If you do not keep your plan updated, it will be totally worthless when your family needs it. In fact, failing to regularly update your plan can create problems that leave your family worse off than if you had never created a plan at all.

As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we have built-in systems and processes to ensure your plan is regularly reviewed and updated, so you do not need to worry about whether you have overlooked. What’s more, our planning services go far beyond simply creating documents and then never seeing you again.

Indeed, we will develop a relationship with you and your family. This is so we can get to know you, your wishes, and be there for you throughout the many stages of life—and above all, be there for your loved ones if and when you cannot be. Contact us, your Personal Family Lawyer® today to get things started with a Family Wealth Planning Session™.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.

As we head into the peak of wedding season, if you are a newlywed or are about to tie the knot, add “estate planning” to your do list. And yes, we imagine that at this happiest time of your life, planning for your potential incapacity and eventual death is probably the farthest thing from your mind right now, but getting it handled as part of your wedding planning is the greatest gift you can give your soon-to-be spouse.

First, be aware of the impact of doing nothing. If you were to become hospitalized for any reason prior to your marriage day, the person you love most in the world would not have the legal authority to make your medical decisions and may not even have the authority to see you in the hospital. Your beloved would have no access to your bank accounts and could even be put into a position of having to move out of your shared home abruptly in the event of your death.

If the idea of these potential realities is terrifying to you, call us today to get a “pre-marriage” plan in place, and then, after your marriage, we can update it.

Indeed, once your marriage is official, your relationship becomes entirely different from both a legal and financial perspective. With this in mind, if you’ve recently said “I do” or have plans to do so in the near future, here are six essential items you need to address in your plan.

1. Beneficiary Designations

One of the easiest—and often overlooked—estate planning tasks for newlyweds is updating your beneficiary designations. Some of your most valuable assets, such as life insurance policies, 401(k)s, and IRAs, do not transfer via a will or trust. Instead, they have beneficiary designations that allow you to name the person (or persons) you’d like to inherit the asset upon your death.

You should name your spouse as your primary beneficiary (if that’s your wish), and then name at least one contingent, or alternate, beneficiary in case your spouse dies before you. And if you have kids, remember to never name a minor child as a beneficiary of your life insurance or retirement accounts, even as a contingent beneficiary.

If a minor is listed as the beneficiary, the assets would be distributed to a court-appointed custodian, who will be in charge of managing the funds until the child reaches the age of majority, at which point all benefits are distributed to the beneficiary outright.

If you want your child to inherit your life insurance or retirement account, you should set up a trust to receive those assets instead. And if you have significant retirement account assets, you may not even want those assets to go outright to your spouse (or future spouse), but instead, you may want to use a trust to distribute your retirement account assets. If you don’t want your retirement assets to go outright to your named beneficiaries and want them to have the maximum tax advantages, contact us for a Family Wealth Planning Session™.

2. A Will

A last will and testament allows you to designate who should receive your assets upon your death. If you are newly married, you likely want your spouse to receive most, if not all, of your assets, and if so, you should name him or her as the primary beneficiary in your will.

Although your spouse would likely inherit all of your assets should you die without a will, known as dying intestate, depending on state law and whether or not you have children, your assets may not get divided according to your wishes, so it’s always a good idea to create a will (or update your old one) when you get married. And to ensure that your will is created and executed properly, you should always work with trusted legal counsel like us, and never rely on generic, fill-in-the-blank documents you find online.

Trust us—you don’t know what you don’t know here. Online legal document services may be better than nothing for some people, but they may actually be worse than nothing for those who truly want to ensure they’ve considered all of the options. For instance, an online document service cannot help you anticipate and plan for all the potential issues related to your family dynamics and assets that can arise and lead to conflicts and disputes between your loved ones. Yet that’s exactly what you would get when you work with a trusted legal advisor like us and use our comprehensive inquiry process.

Additionally, if you intend to leave assets to someone other than your spouse in your will, or for some reason plan to leave your spouse out of your will, be sure to check our state’s laws governing marital property. In some states, a surviving spouse is entitled to a certain percentage of your assets regardless of what’s in your will. Consult with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, for clarification on our state’s marital property laws.

Finally, although a will is an essential part of nearly every estate plan, as you’ll see below, having a will alone is rarely enough to ensure your spouse and other loved ones stay out of court and out of conflict when something happens to you.

3. A Trust

Upon your death, assets included in a will must first pass through the court process known as probate before they can be transferred to your spouse or any other beneficiary. Probate can take months or even years to complete, and it can even sometimes lead to ugly conflicts between your spouse and other family members. Not to mention, your spouse will likely have to hire an attorney to represent him or her during probate, which can result in significant legal fees that can deplete your estate.

Furthermore, a will only governs the distribution of your assets upon your death. It offers you zero protection if you become incapacitated and are unable to make decisions about your own medical, financial, and legal needs. If you become incapacitated with only a will in place, your spouse would have to petition the court to be appointed as your guardian to manage your affairs.

Here’s the bottom line: If your estate plan consists of a will alone, you are guaranteeing your spouse and family will have to go to court if you become incapacitated or when you die.

To avoid the time, cost, and conflict inherent to an estate plan consisting solely of a will, you should consider creating a revocable living trust, along with your will. If your assets are properly titled in the name of your living trust, they would pass directly to your spouse upon your incapacity or death, without the need for any court intervention.

What’s more, in the terms of your trust, you can even outline the specific conditions that must be met for you to be deemed incapacitated, which would allow you to have some control over your life in the event you become incapacitated by illness or injury. This is in contrast to a will, which only goes into effect upon your death and then merely governs the distribution of your assets.

Finally, if you are getting married and have minor children from a previous marriage, there is an inherent risk of conflict between your soon-to-be new spouse and your children because your children and new spouse have conflicting interests about what happens to your assets in the event of your death or incapacity. If you want to ensure a lifelong relationship of harmony and ease between your children and your soon-to-be spouse, or new spouse, contact us—we have very specific strategies we can use to support that outcome.

If you are soon-to-be-married or recently married and anything in this article makes you realize that estate planning isn’t something to put off, but a huge gift to the people you love, contact us to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session™. This is the first step in considering all of your assets, all of your family dynamics, and getting clear on the right plan, at the right price, for the people you love.

Next week, we’ll continue with part two in this series on six estate planning essentials for newlyweds.

​Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.