Planning services
Estate Planning
This is where the money side of a legacy meets the legal documents that govern it: how accounts are titled, who is named on them, and what your heirs will owe on what they receive.
Scope
What this area answers
The kinds of questions this part of the plan answers.
Who receives each account, and does the paperwork reflect that?
Will my estate go through probate?
What will my heirs owe on an inherited retirement account?
Who makes decisions for me if I can’t?
Are the documents I have in place still what I intend?
The work
What this area involves
What the work actually consists of.
Beneficiary designations
Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by the beneficiary form, not by your will. Those forms get checked against what you actually intend today.
Account titling
How an account is titled decides whether it passes straight to someone or goes through probate. Titling gets reviewed alongside your estate documents.
Inherited account rules
What your heirs have to withdraw, and by when, depends on their relationship to you. Those rules changed in recent years.
Incapacity planning
Powers of attorney and healthcare directives get reviewed too. Those matter long before anyone inherits anything.
Coordination with your attorney
Your attorney drafts the documents. This work is the check that your accounts, titling, and beneficiary forms actually agree with them.
Context
Why this area matters
This is where the financial plan and the legal plan meet. A beneficiary form controls a retirement account no matter what the will says, so the two have to agree.
Nothing on this site is legal advice, and planning does not replace an attorney. The job here is to line the financial arrangements up with the documents you already have.
Common questions
About estate planning
No. Drafting legal documents is the practice of law, and that belongs with a qualified attorney.
What happens here is the check that your accounts, beneficiary forms, and titling match what those documents intend.
Related areas
The other four planning areas
Each one pulls on the others, so they get planned alongside each other.