Why you need to do it: Beneficiary designations will go a long way toward ensuring that your assets are distributed in accordance with your wishes after your death. Finally, plan to revisit your beneficiary designations periodically to reflect changes in your situation-what made sense a few years ago may not make sense today. Just be sure that your designations sync with other aspects of your estate plan, and that you are giving due consideration when leaving assets to minor children and/or loved ones with special needs. Know Before You Go: You can name beneficiaries for your company retirement plan and IRA assets, and use transfer on death/payable on death instruments for your taxable brokerage and bank accounts, respectively. Why you need to do it: Beneficiary designations will determine who ultimately inherits most of your major financial assets, trumping any bequests in your will or other parts of your estate plan. Keep your master directory up to date and alert a (preferably younger) trusted loved one to its existence, as well as how to access it in a pinch. Because your master directory is chock-full of sensitive information, be sure to password-protect the document or keep any physical versions under lock and key. Know before you go: If you use your own spreadsheet, consider appending a separate tab with details on your digital affairs, including user names and passwords for sites where you store data, photos, and other valuable information. If you meet with an estate-planning attorney, for example, he or she will start the process by having you list your major assets and liabilities. Moreover, a master directory can serve as the foundation for any other aspects of your estate plan. Having such a document helps ensure that if something happened to you, either death or disability, your loved ones would not have to do any sleuthing to find your assets and be aware of any debts you owe. Why you need to do it: A master directory, while not part of the official estate planning lexicon, is simply a document enumerating your financial assets and liabilities. As you do tackle your estate plan, here are the key jobs to check off your list. Crafting an estate plan involves a series of steps, some of which you have probably already undertaken and are probably going to need to revisit as your life unfolds. Indeed, it is helpful to think of estate planning as just that: a process, rather than something that is one and done and begins and ends in an attorney’s office. The same is true if you have picked a guardian for your young children-even if you have not yet formalized it-or compiled a list of all of your household’s liabilities and assets. If you have designated beneficiaries for your retirement accounts, you have started the estate planning process. Whether you realize it or not, you have probably already done a little bit of estate planning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |