Although few people want to think about what will happen when they die, most want to feel secure that they can leave a lasting legacy for their loved ones. Estate planning is essential to ensure the pieces of your estate fall in the right places.
The lawyers at The Zimmerman Law Firm, P.C., can help you create an estate plan tailored to your life and the legacy you want to leave behind. If you need a Killeen estate planning lawyer, reach out today.
When you meet with one of our Killeen estate planning lawyers, we discuss your estate planning priorities and how we can help you reach them. You will meet with a lawyer at your first meeting and continue to work directly with them throughout your time with the firm. Contact us to learn more or set up an appointment.
What Is Estate Planning?
Estate planning involves creating legal documents to plan for the end of your life and what happens to your property after. Through your estate plan, you can provide for and maximize what you leave to your loved ones and plan for your end-of-life care. As you work with your lawyer, you can determine what works best for your unique situation.
What Happens If You Die Without an Estate Plan?
When someone who dies (a decedent) leaves no estate plan, their property passes to new owners according to state law. This way of inheriting property is called intestate succession.
Who inherits depends on the decedent’s living relatives, mainly whether you leave a surviving spouse.
Surviving Spouse
In Texas, most property you acquire while married is community property and shared with your spouse. However, you may own separate property as well, like:
- Property you acquired before the marriage,
- Inheritances, and
- Gifts to you alone.
If you leave a surviving spouse, your community estate and your separate property pass differently. Unless your spouse has surviving descendants who you do not share and you leave surviving descendants, your community estate passes entirely to your spouse. If they have separate descendants, your descendants are entitled to a portion of the estate.
Your separate property passes one-third to your surviving spouse and two-thirds to your surviving descendants. If you leave no surviving descendants, your spouse takes all your personal estate and half of any separate land. The other half of the land passes according to the remaining law of intestate succession.
No Surviving Spouse
If you leave no surviving spouse, your property passes to your surviving relatives as follows:
- Your descendants,
- Your parents,
- Your siblings and their descendants, and
- Your grandparents and their descendants.
If you leave no surviving relatives or they cannot be located, your estate passes to the state.
What Might Be Part of Your Estate Plan?
Although each estate plan is different, your estate plan may include:
- A Will,
- Trusts, and
- Powers of attorney.
Your plan may also include lady bird deeds, HIPAA releases, and other legal documents that work for you.
Your Will is often the core of your estate plan. However, property passing under your Will passes through probate, which can take time and increase your costs. Other estate planning tools, like trusts, can bypass probate, potentially cutting down the time it takes for your property to get where it should go. Your lawyer can help you find the right balance of passing property through and outside probate.
What Is in a Will?
A Will is a written document identifying what should happen to your property when you die. You must be 18 or older and of sound mind to create a valid Will.
For what you create to be enforceable, it must be:
- In writing,
- Signed by you,
- Witnessed by at least two other people, and
- Signed by those two witnesses.
In your Will, you can direct who should get which specific property you own, select an executor to manage your estate, and set up trusts.
You must carefully follow the legal requirements for creating a will to avoid someone challenging your will in probate court. For example, they may claim that you:
- Did not execute the Will properly (improper execution),
- Were not of sound mind (lacked testamentary capacity), or
- Were coerced into creating the Will (undue influence).
Drafting your Will with the assistance of an experienced estate planning attorney allows you to design your Will to reduce the risk of challenges.
What Can You Do with Trusts?
Depending on your circumstances, you may see trusts as something wealthy people use to leave exorbitant wealth to their children. However, trusts are much more dynamic than this view suggests.
Trust basics
You can place almost any property into a trust, from cash to real estate. Once the property passes to the trust, the trust is funded. Until then, it is unfunded.
Trusts also involve their own mini-vocabulary:
- Beneficiary—the person or people who benefit from the trust;
- Settlor (also known as the grantor or trustor)—the trust’s creator; and
- Trustee—the entity or person that administers the trust.
Trusts are distinguished by two essential characteristics: whether they are revocable or irrevocable and whether they begin during your lifetime or after you die. Revocable trusts allow the grantor to retain control over their assets and take them back, even after the trust is funded. A funded irrevocable trust usually prevents the grantor from taking assets back or making any other changes.
A trust you create during your lifetime is a living trust (inter vivos trust). A trust you create upon your death through your Will is a testamentary trust.
Trust purposes
Some common trust types include:
- Special needs trusts (also known as supplemental needs trusts)—support those with disabilities without jeopardizing their benefits;
- Spendthrift trusts—support those with debts without allowing creditors to access trust assets;
- Charitable trusts—support a chosen cause; and
- Medicaid trusts—allow you to qualify for long-term care Medicaid coverage without spending down assets, but they must be established at least 5 years in advance.
Although these are common types of trusts, trusts can serve many other purposes. For example, you can create a trust to care for a beloved pet for its lifetime, even if it lives longer than you. Your lawyer can help you decide whether trusts fit into your estate plan and, if so, which trusts you might get the most benefit from.
What Are Advance Directives and Powers of Attorney?
As you work with your estate planning attorney, you can also plan for your medical and financial affairs while you’re still around by creating the following:
- Medical power of attorney—granting someone decision-making authority concerning your medical treatment;
- Financial power of attorney—you grant someone decision-making authority concerning your financial affairs; and
- Living will—in a written document, you explain what medical care or treatment you would prefer to receive.
Through these documents, you can ensure your wishes are respected even if you cannot express them.
How Can an Estate Planning Attorney Help?
You can gain peace of mind through an effective estate plan and save time, money, and stress. With the help of a Zimmerman Law Firm estate planning lawyer in Killeen, TX, you can create a comprehensive plan that leaves nothing to chance. Reach out today to get started.