Your Estate Plan is Your Choice

Vincent Averaimo • August 22, 2018

Who do you want as your beneficiaries?

Your estate plan is all about your choice. Who do you want as your beneficiaries? Outside of who you want your beneficiaries to be, are there minor children involved? If there's minor children involved, who will the guardian be of those children? Who will those children go to live with, if it's not your spouse? Who would be the trustee of the assets left to your children if they're under the age of 18 years of age? Who do you want to handle your estate, who's the person that you want to wind up the estate?

And when making these choices, you really need to think about the individual themselves. For example, do you really want someone who is the most unorganized human being in the world working with your attorney to do something that requires an unbelievable amount of organization and processing of paperwork, and acknowledgment and adherence to deadlines? They may be your most favorite person in the world, but they may not be the person who you want to handle your estate. However, maybe that's a person for whom you may admire in terms of how they raise their children, and you may want to name them as the guardian.

So there's a number of considerations that you need to take into account when you're making your choices for your estate. It is important to really lean on your professional estate planners throughout the process to ensure all of you questions are answered so that you can make the best choice for you and your family.

The reason why wills are so important is because if there is no will, then the state law dictates who the beneficiaries will be. If you failed to put together a valid last will and testament, you could have a cousin from a distant European country be the person who is inheriting the assets of your estate, despite whatever you may have wanted to happen with your assets. I know it's a very far-fetched, hard to digest scenario, and maybe it's a little extreme, but the point is do you really want to leave it to chance? Make the choices now so that the future is secure.

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