Author: Steve Fine

Providing care to an elderly, sick or injured person is a life changing commitment. The medical and personal demands are constant and unwavering. The financial and physical impact adds to the strains and must be faced as each presents itself. Planning ahead is possible to some degree within each of these areas.  I’d like to…

Lack of Record Keeping Estate planning is partly about making things easier for your family to close out your estate following your death. However, many successor trustees / personal representatives end up spending a lot of time searching for information which was not properly organized. They need to inventory your estate or trust assets, so they need to know what you…

Not Reading Actual Estate Plan Legal Documents The only way to be certain that your trust, will, powers of attorney and advanced directive do what you want is to read the actual documents. If you don’t understand something, you can seek an explanation from your attorney. If you need to make a change, you can amend the document. Additionally, how can…

Failing to Conduct Adequate Financial Planning A well-drafted estate plan can fail if no assets remain to be managed or distributed. An often-forgotten part of estate planning is financial planning to make sure sufficient income and assets are available to meet your lifetime needs. Your plan needs to include guaranteed sources of lifetime income to meet your living expenses. In addition…

Not Coordinating Financial Accounts with Legal Documents When talking about estate planning, many people only consider legal documents like wills, trusts and powers of attorney. However, estate plans consist of two separate, but related, components: legal documents and financial accounts. The distribution provisions in these components must be coordinated, meaning that both reflect the same goal for the management and distribution of…

Treating Beneficiaries Equally, Instead of Fairly Many parents feel obligated to divide their estate equally among their children. And most children feel they should be treated equally. However, this type of equal distribution at death can be unfair for a number of reasons. The children may have substantially different financial means. The parents may have provided more for one child than the…