Today, I want to tell you why estate planning is important. But why would someone need help with their estate?
An estate plan is a vital component of any financial plan, regardless of the ages of your family members or your net worth. Whether you are single, married, or partnered, there are essential components of an estate plan that can help ensure your family’s financial security.
According to The Balance magazine, there are three key reasons why estate planning is essential for any family.
• Estate Planning Protects Beneficiaries. There are a number of estate planning tools and resources you can use depending on your financial situation. A life insurance policy is among one of them. This quickly provides your beneficiary with a death benefit after you pass away (and they file a claim). The proceeds of a policy can help cover things like final expenses, mortgage payments, and future college tuition for kids or grandkids.
• Estate Planning Protects Your Assets. Without a will and other estate planning resources in place, your assets will be distributed based on the law of the state where you live. Each state has its own set of laws. Even though the recipients of your assets are your spouse and your bloodline, things can quickly become complicated.
• Estate Plans Simplify Things for Your Family. Without a will and other directives in place when you die, you may inadvertently stir up hard conversations between family members. And it’s not always about money. This is especially important with blended families, which may include ex-spouses, new spouses, biological children, and stepchildren. Since each state has its own process for determining heirs, not having a will may cause you to unwittingly exclude someone you care about who isn’t a blood relative or include relatives you don’t want to inherit anything.
At Richardson Professional Solutions, we are a small business that helps other small businesses, non-profits and family estates across the country make time for what matters most by handling their back-office tasks.
Although we clearly have a passion for small businesses, one of our favorite and most rewarding services we provide is estate assistance. What this means is that a family member brings us in to help with tasks for the family like picking up, sorting, and scanning the mail for the estate; paying bills for the estate; being a professional liaison on behalf of the estate with an accountant or lawyer; handling the bookkeeping and document maintenance for the Estate’s accounts; providing fraud monitoring; and so much more.
A quick example is a family who has allowed us to assist them in lifting the burden of the financials off of the family members so they can spend more time with the aging family member in declining health. Not only do we handle the bookkeeping and bill pay, but we have also been a liaison with the repair man, landscaper, and accountant on their behalf, removing that stress.
We also assisted the family with moving the client into an assisted living facility by preparing paperwork for the facility, establishing a post office box, handling mail forwarding and address changes – things that must be done, but are not where the family needs to be focused on spending their time in this stage of life.
We can help with as little or much as your family needs to make time for the important things in your life. No two people or families are the same, and neither are the ways that we support families.
