When do you need your estate plan to work? The answer is when you die or become disabled. The problem is most estate plans are designed based on the circumstances when the plan is created and usually have language to cover some contingencies. I have just come back from a continuing education program that opened my eyes on a better way to make sure that the estate plan I design for you works when your family needs it the most. I would love to have an opportunity to discuss with you how we can better protect the two most important things in your life: everyone you love and everything you own.

In order to design a plan that will work when your family needs it, I’ll need to know the answer to the following questions:

• When you are going to die?
• What the laws will be when you die?
• What assets will you own when you die?
• What will your family situation be when you die?
• Will all your assets be in the trust when you die?

One of the major problems is there are still things I don’t know. Socrates is quoted as saying, “The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.” I have been helping people protect those they love by designing estate plans for over 15 years, but I have realized there is a lot I cannot predict or control.

I have been trying to design plans that would work regardless of the answers to those questions, but I realized there are things that none of us can predict. When I first started creating trusts, I would give the clients instructions on how to get the assets into the trust and send them on their way and assume the trust would get funded. Then I had a client’s daughter come into me after her mother’s death and ask if all the assets were in the trust; I had to answer, “I don’t know.” So I tried to fix that problem in the future, by holding a funding meeting with the client where I made sure that all the assets were in the trust. Then I had a client’s son come in and ask 10 years after the trust was created and funded, “Are all the assets in the trust?” And again I had to say, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what your mother has done over the last 10 years.”

I have come up with a solution that I would love to discuss with you. Please call Tammy to schedule an appointment.