When it comes to surprising your loved ones, what can be a better gift than creating an estate plan to secure them financially if any misfortune falls upon you? There are several reasons to get started, and it’s time to give your family something better than roses and chocolates. Estate planning is not necessarily complicated. All you have to do is focus on five key areas as shared by Miami experts of Arturo R. Alfonso, P.A.
Important Parts Of Estate Planning
Long Term Care & Life Insurance Plans – Medical needs often result in huge expenditures, squandering all your life’s savings. Your spouse may fall into a tough situation, paying the bills for nursing homes and home care facilities. To save your loved ones from facing such a crisis in the future, you need to plan to cover their medical expenses or buy insurance. What you can do is keep a reserved amount of money for covering these expenses, or even ask for an estate planning expert’s consultancy, and work towards covering the medical expenses without letting go of your assets.
Life Insurance
Life insurance is important to help your loved ones sustain their lifestyle if your channel of monthly income suddenly comes to a close. Thus, you need to purchase life insurance – either a term life policy or whole life policy – according to your benefits and requirements for the people most important to you to live a quality life should something happen to you. A term life policy will make sense if you need temporary protection. But the whole-life policy, which is relatively expensive, should be purchased if there is someone who needs expensive care and protection for life after your demise.
Naming Beneficiaries & Will Preparation
A will can save your family from unnecessary property disputes, explicitly specifying who will inherit the property. Your will may also cover other areas like appointing a guardian for the minors, making someone the account manager until the kids grow up to inherit their share, or even instructing things about your burial process.
You may need to name a beneficiary in certain cases. Not only do you have to add the names of the beneficiary, but you also have to continue to update their place in the will. This will ensure that your invested money reaches the desired hands only.
What if you are reduced to a state where you are in no condition to share your consent about the next steps of medical care? As unfortunate as it seems, this situation is not uncommon. Most often, disabled elderly patients have to depend on the decision of their loved ones, who end up disputing among themselves about the emergency measures that should be allowed. To avoid such confusion, you must clarify your preferences about the medical emergencies you need or don’t need as well as all your desires regarding your will before you reach a state where you can no longer communicate. Come clean and make your wishes known in writing if possible.
There may be some complicated situations, which will require pieces of advice and help from an estate planning lawyer. They will help you draft binding legal documents so your wishes will be met even after you can no longer express them. In many cases, you can even call for trust. If you don’t trust your inheritors or want to exempt them from the estate taxes, give more control to the minor heirs over the property they will inherit, or provide for a disabled heir, a trust can come to aid.
Contact Us
Financial security for your loved ones is important. For estate planning, connect with the professionals of Arturo R. Alfonso, P.A. in Miami today.