Expert Mark Powell Offers Valuable Tips for Creating Estate Plans

IRVINE, Calif. - Oct. 21, 2014 - PRLog -- Many people do not like to think about estate planning for a number of reasons: cost, dealing with attorneys, talking about death. In fact, nearly 60% of Americans do not have a basic will. Estate planning expert and founder of Practical Plans, Mark Powell, offers a list of do’s and don’ts that Californians should keep in mind when developing these necessary documents.

Do:

Start with a complete list of your assets and their current values. This will determine the type of plan you need: a simple distribution plan or a tax reduction plan, depending on the value of your assets.

Understand the most important role related to your plan. Estate plans are, of course, valuable after you have passed away, but they are also key if you become incapacitated. In these cases, your plan directs what should happen to you and your assets. Plus, it names the person who will make decisions on where you will live, your medical treatment and even basic needs such as clothing.

Decide who will take care of your children. Name a guardian for your young children. This person will make decisions on every aspect of your children’s lives, such as where they live, where they go to school and what kind of medical treatment they get. You can separate responsibility for managing the assets you leave for your children. If you do this, you need to give instructions to prevent disputes between these people. For example, you do not want one person to authorize a medical treatment only to have the other person question the cost of that treatment.

Think about how simple you want to make things for the surviving spouse. If you want to keep things as simple as possible for the surviving spouse, you should think very carefully about including tax planning provisions in your plan because those impose restrictions on your spouse.

Find an attorney you can talk to. You will be talking about personal issues so you want to make sure you are comfortable talking about any issues with your attorney.

Don’t:

Get stopped by disagreement. Even if you and your spouse disagree about issues, it is okay. You can change your estate plan at any time. It is better to get something in place that needs to be fine-tuned than to leave your family at risk.

Make your plan too complicated. As long as you do not need a tax plan, you can keep it simple.

Overlook the value of lifetime trusts. Leaving your assets “in trust” protects your children’s inheritance from any bad decisions they make after you have passed away and from division if they ever get divorced.

Forget that your attorney works for you. Ask as many questions as you need to make sure your plan is set up the way you want it. Make sure you understand and are comfortable with every element of your estate plan. Your family’s well-being depends on it.

Practical Plans, http://www.practicalplans.com, is an innovative estate planning solution that offers an affordable, easy-to-use, web-based questionnaire to design personalized estate plans, reviewed by an attorney, for California residents.

Founder and CEO Mark Powell, named one of the Top 100 estate planning attorneys in the nation by Worth magazine, has worked as a trusts and estates attorney at nationally reputable law firms in Orange County, California. He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Chapman University Law School in the school’s taxation program and has written numerous articles for publications including the California State Bar’s Trust and Estates Quarterly and Trusts and Estates magazine.