ESTATE PLANNING

Estate planning ensures that your wishes with regard to your family, your loved ones, and your property, are carried out in the event that you are no longer able to make decisions for yourself. You don't necessarily need anything too involved or elaborate - just a plan that will take care of you during your lifetime and your loved ones when you are gone.

At Bartsch Law, we have the experience and knowledge in property, capital gains, and income tax law necessary to create an estate plan that will best serve you and your loved ones - not the Government or administrators.

A Living Trust is Best
A Will does not protect you from probate, a process that is expensive and time consuming. The best way to protect your interests and assets upon incapacitation or death is a Living Trust with Durable Powers of Attorney. A good living trust will:

• Take care of your needs in the event you are incapacitated
• Safeguard your beneficiaries' inheritance
• Protect your hard-earned assets
• Provide multiple protections to beneficiaries (even from themselves!)
• Adjust to and optimize with changes in tax laws

The Bartsch Law Living Trust package includes:

• The Living Trust, which is the main document determining who will manage the estate and how it will be distributed upon your passing.
• A pour-over Will, which operates to catch any assets not titled in the name of the Trust and to nominate a guardian for minor children.
• An Assignment of Assets, which places your personal property into the trust.
• A Certification of Trust, a short summary of the Trust enabling financial institutions to open Trust accounts without presenting the entire Trust document.
• A Community Property Agreement (if you are married) detailing which of your assets are community property and which is separate property.

Two other necessary documents are the General Durable Power of Attorney for finances (GDPA) and the Advance Health Care Directive (AHCD), which we would be happy to explain and discuss.

So, whether you have little or a lot, planning for your incapacity or absence will give you and your loved ones peace of mind. We can help. Call for your free estate review today.

What is an estate plan? Simplified, an estate plan is a way to manage the care of your estate and your person (yourself) while you are alive. That same plan also determines the distribution of your assets and the treatment of your remains after you have passed on.

There are 3 basic estate plans, and from worst to best they are:

1. No Estate Plan With nothing in place, your estate will surely end up in Probate.

2. A Will Having a Will differs from having nothing in place at all in only one respect: A professional-prepared Will names your executor and the beneficiaries of your choosing. However, if the aggregate value of your assets is greater than $100,000, the estate will require probate.

3. A Living Trust with Durable Powers of Attorney If you have placed your assets in the title of the Trust, a Living Trust sidesteps probate completely.  Unlike a Will (only in effect upon death), the Trust begins when you have signed and funded it.