Estate Planning Involves More Than You May Think

The crude stereotype of estate planning is that it's about what happens to a person's materials and money when they pass. However, an estate planning attorney will encourage you to think about a lot more than just your legacy. Pay attention to these 5 other issues that also belong in an estate plan.

Medical Treatment

An estate plan should dictate what sorts of treatments you consider acceptable if you're not in the necessary condition to make such decisions. If you need to undergo a surgery that involves a medically-induced coma, for example, you want the plan to state who makes the medical decisions while you're out.

This should extend to the termination of care under certain circumstances. Especially if you have personal beliefs about the continuation of treatment, you don't want to stress others with making those choices.

Limited Capacity

Your estate should also handle questions about what happens if your capacities are limited. Who will make the decisions? What resources will be at their disposal? Under what conditions should they consider your capacity too diminished?

Notably, you'll want terms that outline your rights to assert your capacity upon your recovery, too. Even if you trust everyone your estate empowers, it's wise to cover that base and protect your rights.

Disappearance

Empowering an estate to deal with your disappearance can seem like an extreme scenario. View it as a bit like purchasing insurance, though. If you might ever be out of communication long enough that other people need to make decisions, plan your estate accordingly. Otherwise, your loved ones may be in a position where they have to ask a court to declare you dead. As with incapacitation, also include terms for reasserting your power once you return.

Business Powers

If you have a business or interests in one, then you also probably have certain powers. For example, you might be a corporate board member with voting rights. What happens to those rights in any of the three previous scenarios?

Ask an estate planning attorney to look at the entirety of your business powers. They can help you to transfer those powers to an appropriate person if you're unavailable or incapacitated. Likewise, you can use the estate to impose a fiduciary duty on that person. This will provide some legal recourse if they abuse or neglect those powers.

Tax Benefits

Many estate planning tools have tax benefits. If you wish to enjoy those benefits, though, you'll need to use them the right way. This may include thinking about how transfers occur, whether to use a trust or not, and when to put money in certain accounts.