If you can, make your successor trustee and durable power of attorney agent someone who lives nearby. Logistics are easier: easier access to bank, financial advisor, local realtor, accountant, and estate planning attorney.
Estate planning is all about expectations. If you've estranged yourself from your parents for decades, don't expect much of an inheritance. On the other hand, if you remain a valuable part of the family, you will probably receive a valuable share of the estate.
If you are the child who took on the job of caring for your parents in their old age and you spent time and your own money on them, don't expect to be reimbursed when they die - unless they included a provision in their trust for that or made out a promissory note for their estate to pay you back. If not, your contributions will be considered a gift. Hopefully, your siblings will reimburse you, but they are under no legal obligation to do so.
Sending your estate planning attorney 20 pages of instructions and questions from Chat GPT prior to your first meeting can make your estate planning more complicated and more expensive. For best results, narrow the AI page count to one.
AI will be a great tool for estate planning, but it will still require human thought, guidance, and discernment. AI slop is AI slop.
Leave a roadmap of your assets for your successor trustee so he doesn't have to take three months to discover your accounts. For more on how to write up your hand-off instructions click here.
Action is better than inaction. If you wait until you can formulate the perfect design for your unique estate plan, you may wait until it's too late. And you may make it so complicated that it will be difficult and expensive to administer.
Simple and solid beats complicated.
Estate planning and life insurance bring peace.
If you need to make changes to your living trust, do it sooner rather than later. It's just harder to get things done when you get older. We've seen many cases of older people wanting to change their trustees because the ones listed in their trust have died, but they never get around to it. Then there's no living successor trustee, and the kids have to go to court to get a judge to appoint one.
Be kind to your brother or sister who has taken on the task of successor trustee when your parent dies. It's a thankless job and a lot of work.
Summer will be here before you know it. Now is the time to get your estate plan done before your family vacation.
Not sure how to start? Our California estate planning attorneys will help you sort out what makes sense for your situation on a free 15-minute intro call.
We serve families in person in our El Dorado Hills, Roseville, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo offices, and virtually from anywhere in California.