Estate Planning
Ready. Set. Go.
Start an inventory of your financial assets and real property.
This initial inventory does not have to be precise. It should be specific enough to have an understanding of the assets that make up your estate. While a completed estate plan will address four general types of assets, (real property, financial assets, tangible personal property, and digital assets) only your real property and your financial assets need to be included in an initial inventory.
ITEMS TO INCLUDE IN AN INITIAL INVENTORY
Real property means any real estate such as your home, the cabin you share with your siblings, the investment property, the hunting acreage.
Financial assets such as bank accounts, stocks, bonds, annuities, investment accounts, retirement accounts and life insurance, as well as ownership in business interests or partnerships.
Here’s a link to an asset tracking form to help document your inventory.
Identify the people you trust to speak and act for you.
In this phase, ask yourself these questions:
Whom do you trust to convey YOUR wishes about YOUR health and health care if you are not able to speak for yourself?
Whom do you trust to act for you, to make financial decisions for you? Would you trust some people to act for you while you are alive, and others to act for you after you have died?
If you have minor children, whom do you trust to care for them if you have died?
Identify the people and organizations that would receive your assets after your death.
Step one: make the decisions as if your estate were being distributed “tomorrow.”
Step two: if some of the people or organizations you have included are not able to accept the gift, then what happens/where does it go?
Step three: (repeat step two).