As the saying goes around this office, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Michael Wild in a baby carriage!”

While estate planning might not seem romantic, and you probably don’t usually finish that rhyme with Michael Wild, there is something to be said for estate planning as a romantic gesture. It certainly indicates a lot of commitment to your spouse, family, and the people who mean the most to you. No Valentine? No problem. Estate planning is still vitally important for you, even if you’re a bachelor or bachelorette.

Estate Planning & Marriage

If you’re getting married or are currently married, you should definitely be creating or updating your estate plan. An estate plan decides where your assets will be transferred when you die. Here are some things to consider when including your spouse in your future.

• Marital property. Marital property is jointly owned between you and your spouse. It is property that you purchased using marital assets. You and your spouse will have to decide where you want it to go in the event of your death. Because it is marital property, it needs to be a decision made that involves the two of you.
• If you die, you will probably want to make your spouse a beneficiary of at least some of your assets. In an estate plan, you can specify your spouse as the beneficiary through a living trust, which sets up a three-party relationship whereby the trustee grants your spouse the assets upon your death. You can also make your spouse the trustee for your children, who you can make beneficiaries.
• Decision-making in emergencies. An advance directive allows you to delineate the healthcare choices you want in case you sink into a coma or are otherwise too incapacitated to make these decisions. You can also name your spouse as a decisionmaker, if you choose. You can name them Power of Attorney, which gives them the authority to make financial decisions on your behalf if you are unable to make them yourself.
• Money is pretty romantic, and the tax cuts that estate planning can get you and your spouse will be pretty significant, particularly since the estate tax will soon be dissipating in a few years’ time.

Don’t Forget the Kids

Your “baby carriage” probably won’t have Michael Wild in it, but he definitely can help you figure out how to best take care of your kids via estate planning. If you have minor children, you definitely need to make sure that you assign guardianship to them in the event of your death. You can also put aside money for your kids’ colleges and name them as beneficiaries or your Power of Attorney. Your children will benefit highly from your estate plan.

No Kids, No Spouse, No Problem

If you’re single and childless, you should still have an estate plan. You likely have assets and property and, if you die, you don’t want to drag your relatives through probate court. Estate planning can divide up your property and transfer it quickly, with as little hassle as possible.

This Valentine’s Day, show your loved ones commitment and care by creating an estate plan or updating a currently existing one. No matter what your status in life, everyone can benefit from estate planning.

February isn’t just the month of Valentines, it’s also a month where you acknowledge your physical heart too. February is American Heart Month, recognizing the fact that heart disease, stroke, and similar ailments are huge problems in America. For a not-so-fun fact, heart disease is actually the leading cause of death for both men and women. So, don’t just take care of your heart by sending Valentines—make sure you’re going to the doctor and checking on your physical health as well.

Have a heart in another way too—write a will. If you want to give the best Valentine to your loved ones, you can help them prepare for the future.

What is a will?

A will isn’t exactly wrapped with a red bow with candy hearts attached to it, but it is sentimental in its own way. There are two types of wills you should know about: a living will and a last will and testament. Chances are, you probably have heard of the second one more than the first.

A living will is a document that details what you want to do in the event you become incapacitated (you’re in a coma or so sick you cannot make your own decisions with a clear head). The living will is effective once you’re unable to communicate. It tells doctors and nurses what they should do in terms of your medical care. It is all about medical care—usually refusing or requesting medical treatment. If you’re unconscious and have no living will, hospitals may perform procedures they consider legally obligatory. If you don’t want that, you should specify that in your will. A living will is also known as an advance directive.

Your last will and testament provides instructions on what to do with your property, assets, and guardianship after you pass away. It is legally effective upon your death. You can name your kids’ guardian if something happens to you, making this an extremely important document for parents of minor children. The person who carries out your last will is your executor. If you die without a will, you are considered intestate, and the state’s intestacy laws will control how your assets are divided.

Which should you get?

You should always have a living will, as you never know if something will happen. Secondly, a last will and testament isn’t the be-all, end-all of estate planning. A living trust is actually preferable to a last will. A living trust constructs a three-party fiduciary relationship. It is legally effective immediately and can be changed easily, if you want to change your beneficiary.

A last will requires your executor to go through probate court, a long, arduous process that takes up time and resources. A living trust doesn’t require that court visit, making it easier to have than a last will. Schedule an estate planning consultation today to help you decide.

Divorce is a bummer (or maybe not, depending on your situation). It impacts almost every area of your life, and your estate plan is no different. While estate planning might not be high on your to-do list during the divorce process, you should still take some time to consider which documents need to be updated.

Divorce laws vary based on your state, but, overall, the legal principle is the same: it is the termination of the marital bond and restructuring or canceling of martial obligations. Both the pre- and post-divorce phases require action on your part when it comes to your estate plan.

Before the Divorce is Final

There are several documents you need to

update before the divorce is final. These include your living trust, living will, Power of Attorney, and will. You cannot assume that the completion of the divorce will immediately terminate your ex-spouse’s involvement in your estate plan. While that may be the case for the will, it’s not always so for the others.

• Living trust. Your trust will be interpreted based on whether it is revocable or not. A trust that is revocable at the time of your death, provisions in the trust regarding your ex-spouse will be invalid. But, if your trust is irrevocable and you die with the trust still naming your ex-spouse as beneficiary, he or she is going to get all your things. The law cannot help you in this situation.

• Living will. Your living will concerns healthcare directives and other related issues. If you fall ill and are incapacitated, who is your agent? If it is your ex-spouse, you may want to change that. If you feel comfortable with the person you’ve just divorced making critical life-or-death decisions about your medical care, then you should keep them as your agent. If not, make the change. It is not always clear whether a state’s laws will automatically excuse your ex-spouse from his or her duties in your living will.

• Power of Attorney. Generally, depending on the state in which you live, if your spouse is your power of attorney and you divorce him or her, this grant of power will be revoked once the action for divorce is filed. However, the whole power of attorney is not revoked in its entirety. Your spouse may still be named as guardian, and that will not be revoked until the final decree.

• Will. Depending on when you made your will, the final decree of divorce will generally revoke any provisions in the will concerning your ex-spouse. This only applies to your ex-spouse. Your ex-spouse’s kids are not kicked off the will, so if that’s something you want to do, you cannot count on the rule of law doing it for you.

Post-Divorce: What You Need to Do

So, you’ve made it, and the final decree has happened. Now what?

Well, in your estate plan, you will likely have some gaps to fill, including power of attorney, agent, beneficiaries, and other roles from which you have removed your ex-spouse. You will need to restructure and re-do your estate plan to make sure those critical positions are covered. Schedule an estate planning consultation today, regardless of whether you are pre- or post-divorce.

Restructuring a Business for Asset Protection

          If you have a business, you know how hard you’ve worked to maintain it: all the late hours, countless phone calls, endless paperwork, and more. When you pass on, you’ll want to make sure that these assets you’ve worked so hard for are protected. Estate planning can help you do that.

Not only are regular assets (money, property, etc.) eligible for protection through estate planning, less conventional ones are as well. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be protected via a trust, ensuring that everything you want protected—even something outside the traditional asset realm—is kept safe and secure.

What is a Trust?

A trust is pretty simple to understand. It’s essentially a three-party fiduciary relationship. You have your trustor (you, in this case), who transfers assets to a trustee for the benefit of the third party, known as a beneficiary. This transfer grants the trustee nominal ownership over assets. These same principles of a three-party relationship apply to your business assets. The trust is treated, by the IRS, as an entity.

When you pass on, your trustee will confer your assets to the beneficiary. You may be thinking, “How is this better than a will?” Many people, when they think of estate planning, automatically jump to the last living will and testament as the golden document to have. But actually, a living trust is more advantageous.

Trust vs. Will

A trust goes into effect the moment you create it, whereas a will only becomes effective after you die. You can use a trust to start transferring your property prior to death; you cannot do that with a will, so you have a little less control. Also, a trust will get you out of probate court. If you die with just a will, you have to go through probate, which is a long, tiring process where a court distributes your assets for you. This can tie up your family for years while a court ensures the validity of the will.

Lastly, a trust can be kept private, whereas a will is on the public record. While a trust doesn’t include the ability to make funeral arrangements and name your children’s guardian if they’re minors, it does let you save on taxes and make disability arrangements.

Crypto: The New Wave

Everyone’s talking about Bitcoin these days, and everyone seems to have an opinion about it. If you’re a Bitcoin investor, or an investor in other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, and more, you’ve heard all the opinions, made up your mind, and, now, most likely just want to know how you can protect your coins via an estate plan.

As cryptocurrency jumps in popularity, more and more estate planners are encouraging clients to work their crypto into an estate plan. Cryptocurrency is, like your other assets, subject to distribution. Your crypto cannot be inherited, however, and, if you don’t include it in your estate plan, it will be as though it never existed. A trust is, as with your other assets, the best way to manage this property.

When deciding how to manage your cryptocurrency, make sure that your intended beneficiary is able to manage an entity like crypto, which is very volatile. You’ll also want to ensure that your directions are clear, including how to access your account to get the coins. This complicated, especially as cryptocurrency is relatively new, hence why an estate plan is best carried out under the guidance of a professional estate planner.

If you want to make sure that your business is protected after you pass on, a trust is the way to do it. Your assets will be protected, and you’ll be able to start the process before death, allowing you a measure of control and the ability to avoid probate.

Start Anew, Update Your Estate Plan

There’s one New Year’s resolution you should definitely make and keep: updating your estate plan. With each year comes new considerations, and your estate plan should reflect these. You might be tempted to put off your estate plan updates, but you never know what will happen. It’s better to be safe than sorry, as the old saying goes.

Here are some examples of life changes and how you may want to update your estate plan to reflect them.

New Year, New Beneficiaries

Has there been a new baby in the family? Have you recently stumbled upon a new charity to which you want to donate? In order to do so, you will need to update your estate plan. This way, after you pass on, your assets will be transferred where you want them, including to the new beneficiary.

It’s important to get started on this now and updating your estate plan to reflect the new individual. People come and go in our lives, and you don’t want to miss your opportunity to include who you want in your postmortem plans.

Rethinking Guardianship

If you have minor children, you’ve likely included a guardianship instrument in your estate plan that designates who will be the legal guardian of your kids in the event of something happening to you. If you’re still happy with the legal guardian you’ve chosen, that’s great. However, if you are not, you don’t want to wait to have that switched.

Things happen, and if you have reason to doubt the competency of the guardian you’ve chosen for your kids, you do not want to take a chance and put off updating it. Worst case scenario, something happens and your kids are left with someone who cannot take care of them. If you have doubts about your chosen guardian, make sure to update your estate plan.

Family Feuding

Similarly, there may have been other developments in your family that warrant you rethinking your estate plan. Divorce is an example. You will want to make sure that the estate plan does not include your ex-spouse (or the ex-spouse of another family member), if you do not want it to. Also, if you feel like you want to disinherit someone, that is another reason to update your estate plan.

It is best to think of the estate plan as a living document. It reflects changes in your family; it is not stagnant, nor should it be treated as such. Families have their own feuds and fighting. An estate plan needs to keep up with the dynamics, if need be.

The Imminent Arrival of the 2018 Tax Code

The 2018 tax code is bringing some new changes with it. And by “some,” we mean a lot. Two of these changes have to do with the estate and gift taxes. By 2024, there will be no estate tax. But, for now, if your estate is under $22.4 million as a married couple, you get an exemption. And, since the estate tax is often unified with the gift tax, that further extends the exemption on money you can give away. This new update is another reason you will likely want to look at your estate plan.

New year, new updates! Consult your estate planner to make sure that your plans reflect any changes in your life during the past year.