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Think estate planning is only for the wealthy? It’s a popular belief, but don’t be fooled. Everyone has assets. No matter what you own, a solid estate plan allows you to designate who inherits your property, protect it from creditors, choose guardians for your minor children, minimize estate taxes, and reduce the likelihood of family disputes. Put simply, estate planning is for everyone.
Pennington Law, PLLC is an Arizona wealth management and estate planning law firm. We help people make practical decisions for the distribution of their assets after their deaths. Our experienced estate planning attorneys can review your assets and develop a proactive plan for what happens to them when you die. We can also discuss estate planning strategies that you can use during your lifetime to protect your wealth, prepare for long-term care, bypass probate, and accomplish other financial needs and goals.
You can learn more about our legal services in a free consultation. Call or contact us now to speak with a trusted estate planning lawyer.
Reasons You Need an Estate Plan Regardless of Wealth
Understanding the role of estate planning in wealth management is crucial. Arizona provides numerous legal tools to help people manage their assets before and after death. You may not be rich, but you certainly have assets and likely have opinions about who should inherit your property after your death. With properly drafted estate planning documents, you control the decisions over asset distribution, lowering the chances of conflicts among surviving family members.
Regardless of your wealth, an estate plan provides the following advantages:
- Control over heirs and beneficiaries – If you die without a will, Arizona law dictates who inherits your estate, which may not align with your wishes. Our estate planning lawyers can help you write a will to ensure your assets go to the people and/or causes you love after you pass away. Specific tools can even provide for loved ones with poor spending habits, ensuring they don’t waste your hard-earned assets by overspending.
- Avoiding probate – Arizona law requires many estates to go through probate court unless it’s clear who will inherit the deceased person’s assets. A living trust is one way to access your assets while you’re alive and transfer them to your heirs after death without going through probate. Bypassing probate will spare your loved ones both money and time.
- Protection from creditor claims – Creditors like banks, credit card companies, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may request payment of unpaid debts from your estate’s assets. Various estate planning tools, such as creating irrevocable trusts, making ownership transfers, establishing LLCs and FLPs, purchasing insurance, and maximizing retirement plan contributions, can protect your assets from creditor claims. Our legal professionals can advise you on the best strategies for your circumstances.
- Minimizing family conflict and stress – The last thing grieving family members need is an argument over your estate. You can shield your family from disputes by making a clear estate plan that makes your final wishes known. Family members have less reason to fight when there’s no ambiguity about what you want.
- Documenting your healthcare preferences – An estate plan can help you make your healthcare wishes known if a medical emergency incapacitates you. Legal documents such as a medical power of attorney (also called an advance healthcare directive) can grant legal authority to someone to make treatment decisions for you when you cannot communicate them. A living will is another document that advises family members and doctors of your wishes regarding life support and end-of-life care.
- Naming someone to make financial and legal decisions – You may want one person to make your medical decisions if you become incapacitated, but someone else to handle decisions about your finances, business affairs, or legal issues. You can name these agents ahead of time by executing various types of powers of attorney in Arizona, such as a durable financial power of attorney.
- Choosing guardians for your children – You can use your will to name a guardian for your minor children, allowing you to decide who should raise them if you pass away before they reach adulthood. This makes it possible for you to pick someone you trust to take on the vital task of raising your children.
- Providing for heirs with special needs – If any of your beneficiaries have disabilities, you can give money to meet their needs through a special needs trust (SNT), which will provide for your heir without affecting their eligibility for Medicaid or other government benefits. A first-party SNT is established with the disabled individual’s own assets, while a third-party SNT is funded by the assets of a third party. We can help you set up the right type of special needs trust based on your situation.
- Making business succession plans – If you own a business and want to ensure the company you built building remains operational after your death, you need a business succession plan. We can help you identify your successors, establish a smooth transfer of ownership, and resolve all tax considerations.
How Our Estate Planning Attorneys Help People Plan for the Future
Think of an attorney as your estate planning guide. Pennington Law, PLLC is recognized throughout Surprise, Buckeye, Sun City West, and Peoria for our professionalism and dedication. Our legal team takes a comprehensive approach to estate planning, offering appropriate advice that fits your situation, even if you aren’t wealthy.
Our estate planning attorneys can develop estate plans that employ a wide range of tools to protect your assets. These strategies extend beyond a last will and testament or do-it-yourself documents you can find online. We can create a customized estate plan that may incorporate trusts, long-term care planning, asset protection, financial planning, retirement planning, and tax planning to protect your future and financial health. Making advanced preparations for small estates can still spare you and your loved ones headaches and heartache down the road. And if we find your estate planning needs can be accomplished on a small scale, rest assured that we will not try to upsell legal products just to put money in our pockets.
Arrange a Free Consultation With an AZ Estate Planning Lawyer Now
If you have estate planning questions, Pennington Law, PLLC has your answers. Contact us now for a free case review. There’s no obligation, so you have nothing to lose.