There was a lot of talk several years ago when Prince passed away without a will and without any significant estate planning. If you have anything of value to you in your life, including but not limited to: your children, your spouse, your business, family heirlooms, a family cabin, not to mention cash, stocks, life insurance, etc., then doing your estate planning is essential.
We have a lot of business clients, and other clients that we help with different areas of the law, and we tell each of them that they need to have their estate planning and business succession planning in order. It’s an easy thing to put off, because we presume that we will wake up tomorrow just like we did today.
We are comfortable planning for the future as it concerns our business, as it concerns our own retirement, as it concerns future vacations, weddings, larger home improvement projects or additions, but we seem to get cold feet when it comes to getting a will, or a trust, or a health care directive, or other estate planning instruments in place.
There are many paths to successful estate planning, especially for business owners, but it begins with you making a call to your attorney. As mentioned above, depending upon your situation, we may advise the execution of a will, a pour-over will, a health care directive, a transfer on death deed, the formation of a corporation or limited liability company, a living trust, a joint trust, an irrevocable trust, a disclaimer trust, power of attorney, and other similar instruments and strategies.
Even if you have done some estate planning in the past, you should see if what you did in the past still makes sense today. For example, are there new members of your family? Are there charities or other entities that you would like to benefit from your estate? Are there certain folks you might want to exclude from your estate? Further, the laws regarding estate planning are always in flux, from changes to the gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer limit to the recent significant changes in Minnesota’s LLC laws.
We would be happy to advise you on these issues and any others that may impact your family or your business. Please contact us here.