When thinking about creating an estate plan, whether through a Will or a Trust, or sometimes both, many people base their planning on the assumption that they will live until a certain point in the future. A woman might think the Wills she and her husband are writing won’t need to be used until the survivor of them has died in twenty to thirty years. A fifty something working on his Will, who plans to retire when he is sixty-five, might think his Will won’t be needed until he’s been retired for at least ten years. A couple with college age children might think their estate plan won’t go into effect until their children have completed their education, married, and have families of their own. Those kinds of expectations will prove to be true for some people, but not for everyone. You can’t know what the future will bring, so your estate shouldn’t be planned in the expectation that it won’t be needed until some future milestone has been met.
The better way to design your estate plan is to ask yourself what you would have wanted to happen if you had died yesterday. Would your children have been mature enough to manage an inheritance? Would your elderly parent have suddenly lost the financial assistance you’ve been providing? Would your widowed spouse have been vulnerable to predators? If you think about the here and now, that will help you design a better plan.
You don’t need to change your expectation that you’ll be living many years into the future, but you should have a plan that protects the people you care about in the event that expectation isn’t met.
An estate plan isn’t something that can be done only one time and then set in stone, never to be revised. Families change, assets change, health changes, needs change, and the laws change. Once created, an estate plan should be reviewed at least every five years. When you review it, you can update it to reflect your current concerns.
Is it time to revisit your estate plan to be sure your current needs are being met? Contact our office at the Estate Planning Law Group of Georgia to schedule an appointment to update your estate plan by calling at 770-822-2723 or contact us through our website.
Contact the Estate Planning Law Group of Georgia
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