Avoid Lawyers Who Charge Too Much for a California Living Trust
Lawyers used to charge an arm and a leg for estate plans (and some still do), but now, thanks to technology and other advancements, you can create an affordable living trust without breaking the bank.
There’s nothing worse than needing to take care of important financial matters for your family, but feeling stuck because it seems too expensive.
Maybe you don’t have a lot of property, but you still need to avoid unnecessary costs and time spent disbursing your property in probate court.
An affordable living trust, under California law, will accomplish that for you.
In my law practice, and in business in general, I have been able to create exceptional value for my clients at very affordable prices.
That’s because I leverage software, technology, and my experience of helping many clients in the past to streamline and refine my processes to create efficiency.
I have helped clients with estate planning throughout the entire state of California – from the bay area to San Diego.
Click the button below to get started today with your affordable living trust.
Is a Living Trust the Only Thing I Need for my Estate Plan?
When creating estate plans for clients, I usually begin with the affordable living trust first, because that is really the core document of your estate plan.
Also, it’s a way to get started with your estate plan without paying for everything all at once.
During your lifetime, your living trust serves as a flexible container to hold your property, which can be transferred in or out of your trust without tax consequences.
Once you pass away, the trust then becomes irrevocable and manages your property the same as a will does, except, you won’t have to deal with probate court, extra fees, or additional time spent in court to give your property to your heirs.
But there are a few other crucial pieces to an estate plan.
Some clients hire me to get it all done at once, while others like to implement one piece at a time.
The other essential elements of an estate plan include: your power of attorney, advance healthcare directive, and HIPAA release.
Power of Attorney – Compliments Your Affordable Living Trust
A power of attorney “POA” allows you to delegate legal decision-making to another person, and works in tandem with your affordable living trust.
This is an important part of estate planning because you can delegate another person to handle business in the unfortunate situation where you become incapacitated (unable to make legal decisions for yourself).
It’s also a handy tool for practical reasons other than losing mental capacity, such as when you need another person to conduct business transactions on your behalf while you’re out of the country, or otherwise occupied.
And the power of attorney is extremely flexible in terms of how you set it up.
It can take effect immediately or at some specified time in the future.
You can appoint one agent or several to act on your behalf, and you can decide whether multiple agents can act independently, if they must act jointly, and appoint specific agents to handle different types of tasks.
Setting up your power of attorney now can avoid a huge headache later trying to get a conservatorship appointed, which can be costly and take a lot of time in probate court.
Best of all, you can set up your power of attorney all on your own, for only $35. Just click here to get yours today!
Advance Healthcare Directive – An Essential Addition to Your Affordable Living Trust
A large part of caring for you loved ones is making sure they aren’t stuck with making tough decisions that you could have made for them already in advance.
Your advance healthcare directive not only saves your loved ones some sleepless nights, but it gives you the opportunity to think about – and decide – how to take care of your body at the end of your life.
You don’t usher in the grim reaper any sooner by paying attention to this now.
It can be uncomfortable to think about your end-of-life medical care, but it’s even more uncomfortable to think of what might happen with your healthcare when you no longer have the chance to advise doctors or your family regarding your wishes.
Not only can you decide what happens, but you can decide who has the power to make judgment calls and other decisions with your medical care.
Best part is, you can get this set up fairly quickly using my ready-to-go Advance Healthcare Directive.
Just click the button to contact me today to get started.
HIPAA Release – Create This Along with Your Affordable Living Trust
Under Federal law, your health information is protected.
Even your family cannot access your health information, unless the info belongs to a spouse or minor child.
So if the agent you designated to make health decisions is anyone other than your spouse, you’ll need to draft up a HIPAA release (and I recommend doing a HIPAA release even for spouses as well, to avoid any potential issues).
If you give your agent power to make healthcare decisions on your behalf, but you don’t also give that person access to your protected health information, it’s like giving him the keys to your car with no gas in it.
In order to make the agency relationship worthwhile, your agent will need access to your relevant health information to make the best decisions possible.
I can set up your HIPAA release for only $12.
Just click below to contact me for help.
Pour Over Will – Puts Property Back into Your Affordable Living Trust
Generally speaking, you don’t want to rely on a will to transfer your property upon your death because a will must pass through probate court before your beneficiaries can have your property.
You want your affordable living trust to do that for you.
However, it is wise to create a pour over will, which is a tiny, quick will that serves as a catch-all in case you accidentally forgot to fund your trust with property you intended your trust to control.
The pour over will solves this problem by taking any property you inadvertently forgot to transfer into your trust, and pours it back into your trust.
The only thing worse than probating a will, is trying to probate property that was unnamed by either your trust or a will, which is called “intestate succession” and is a time-consuming process.
The pour over will is a “just in case” mechanism to save property from passing through probate court “intestate”.
I normally only create pour over wills in conjunction with a living trust.
But if you’ve already created your living trust, and have yet to create your pour over will to act as a fail safe, I recommend doing so right away.
Conclusion
Although the ancillary documents discussed above are considered essential elements of your estate plan, it still holds true that the affordable living trust is the core of your estate plan, and it can be created all on its own.
Whether you are ready to put together a more comprehensive plan, or you wish to begin with the affordable living trust only, I’m here to help!