Thinking about the future can be difficult and stressful, but no one wants to leave their assets and family unprotected. Without a will or trust, your assets and family will be left at the mercy of the local government’s probate court. Work with our experienced estate attorneys in the NYC and Poughkeepsie areas to ensure your estate plan reflects what’s best for you and your family.
Working with our professional estate planning lawyers can help ensure:
Your estate plan is personalized to your and your family’s needs.
It’s understandable to find planning for your own death depressing. The idea of finality and loss is painful and frightening for many people, but you shouldn’t avoid it. This commonly held fear has led many people to forget that estate planning is not just about death.
Most people consider estate planning the process by which individuals plan to leave their assets to whom they want, when they want, in the way they want. While that statement is true, that’s only part of estate planning. Estate planning is also how many people provide for their families while they’re still alive in the short term and long term.
This can include having plans that:
The main thing people think of when they consider estate planning is how they can take care of their families after they pass away. Only through careful planning can you ensure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes. But how much control do you have over your assets after you pass away?
Estate plans are not a single document, but rather a whole collection of documents that one puts together to deal with a variety of circumstances.
At the Law Offices of Diron Rutty, our goal is to create a comprehensive estate plan that reflects your individualized needs. By providing you with the correct information, you will be able to make the right choices and prepare documents that go hand in hand with your true intentions. We offer an extensive review of your situation and will assist you in creating an individualized plan. This can involve one or more of the following strategies:
Our office will assist you in creating a plan which can minimize or create the tools to assist you in eliminating estate taxes. The various tools available allow you to set up multiple different types of trusts (bypass trusts, credit shelter trusts, charitable trusts, life insurance trusts, AB trusts), or form a company to hold your family’s wealth.
If your goal is asset protection, our office will assist you in preserving your wealth and reducing the risk of losing any of your personal belongings to creditors. While addressing your needs, we assist you in setting up asset protection sources, such as trusts, family-owned companies, and annuities. By setting up an irrevocable trust, you are giving up control and access to your assets, allowing the trust assets to remain out of the reach of your creditor and/or unavailable as your resource for Medicaid planning. However, family members can be beneficiaries of an irrevocable trust, thereby still providing them with financial support that is outside the reach of creditors after you pass away. Other types of irrevocable trusts can be created for specific benefits. One example would be a Revocable Living Trust, which offers asset protection for the trust’s beneficiaries while the trust creator is still alive.
If you have minor children when you pass away, they will be left in a difficult situation beyond losing a parent/legal guardian. Many difficult situations and compromises can be avoided if you give guardianship directions and set up a trust on your children’s behalf. If any of your children have a disability, you can set up a special needs trust (also known as supplemental needs trust) to avoid losing government benefits such as SSI and Medicaid after inheriting an estate or settling a lawsuit.
If you would like to discuss your estate planning needs, contact our estate planning lawyers at 718-324-0404 in New York City, NY, and 845-849-9201 in Poughkeepsie, NY. You can also use our contact form, or email us at info@DironRuttyLLC.com.
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