Who We Help
We know how much you love your family. You want to hand down everything you have spent a lifetime building, and you want the whole thing to feel good and unfold with ease.
You also understand that your true wealth is not just the balance in your accounts. It is the well-being of the people who matter to you. No two lives look alike, so real planning can never come from a one-size-fits-all form you download off the internet. Find yourself below.
Family People
Maybe you are single, maybe married. Maybe you have children, maybe not. Your relationship might look traditional or thoroughly modern.
Whatever your situation, one thing ties you together with everyone reading this: you genuinely, deeply care about the people in your life, and you want to spare them as much difficulty as possible when something happens to you.
That would be simple, if only our probate courts were not jammed with the fallout of money and family colliding. The protection that estate planning provides is for everyone, every individual and every family with anyone or anything worth caring about.
Married With Children
On the surface, estate planning looks pretty simple when you are married with kids. You want your spouse making decisions for you if you cannot, and you want your assets flowing to your spouse when you pass, and then on to your children.
But keeping your family out of court and out of conflict takes answering a whole set of questions that go well beyond that surface picture, even for a straightforward married-with-children household. There are also some specific, practical steps to take so your assets do not slip away to the state’s unclaimed property fund because your family missed something while you were not there to point the way.
Blended Families
However warm and easygoing you believe your spouse and your children are with one another, a certain amount of tension between them after your death is simply built in and unavoidable.
The good news is that this tension can be softened, and you can make sure the people you love most are all well cared for with as little friction as possible. You can even take steps now that help them stand together as one team during a time of grief. It does not fall into place on its own, though. It takes planning.
Single Parents
If something happens to you while your children are still young, you want to be the one who has already decided who raises them and how.
Ideally, your child’s other parent would be a fit choice to take custody if you could not be there. In plenty of cases, though, that is neither possible nor what you would want. And even when it is, you may prefer that someone other than your former spouse or partner manage the money you leave behind. You need the right legal documents in place to spell out your wishes, so nothing catches your family off guard.
Life Partners
In some respects, estate planning matters even more when you and your life partner are together but unmarried. The law simply does not protect your partner. Full stop.
The responsibility to act falls to you, to guarantee you can be at your loved one’s hospital bedside. Without those steps, the person you cherish most in the world could easily be shut out after an accident, kept from making health care decisions for you, even barred from visiting. And that only covers the health care side of things.
Your Chosen Family
Whoever makes up your chosen family, you have people and things you care about and want to keep safe. You want to pass along what you have worked a lifetime to build, and you want to do it in a way that lets your loved ones feel your love right when they will need it most.
Beyond that, you want to be the one who decides who receives what you worked so hard to create. And you want the reassurance that your chosen family will be able to care for you and love you if you ever become incapacitated. Estate planning lets you do every bit of it, with ease.