Estate Planning: The Last Love Letter You’ll Write

I once took a creative writing course at the local junior college. The number one lesson I took away from that class was that in writing it is better to show than tell the audience what is happening. This is true in life as well. While it is important to tell your friends and family that you love them, it is even more impactful to show how much you love them. One way that you may not normally think about to show your family that you love them is by creating an estate plan.

How is Your Estate Plan a Love Letter?

Here are a few reasons why I call an estate plan the last love letter you’ll ever give your family:

• Gets Your House in Order: Estate planning is a great opportunity to get all your financial ducks in a row. If you pass away without a plan, your family will spend so much time wading through all that you have left behind looking for the right documents so that they can get all your important final wishes carried out. If you create an estate plan with our firm, we provide you with a binder that allows you a space to put all your important documents, so they will be easily accessible when you say your final goodbyes.
• The Right People Doing the Right Jobs: When you create your estate plan, one of the greatest opportunities you have is removing the cold court process from your passing and replacing it with trusted people in positions of power that you have hand selected to carry out your wishes.
• Gets Rid of Family Disputes: while simply creating a trust cannot guarantee that someone will not contest your wishes, an experienced attorney can work with you to make sure that there are incentives for those that you leave behind to get in line with your wishes. Often all that a family needs is a written plan to follow so they know that they are carrying out your wishes and an estate plan certainly does this. Again, removing court from the process does typically make for a more cooperative family.
• Leave a Legacy: The greatest part of creating an estate plan is that the assets that you used can be used to fulfill your desires as a parent, as a grandparent, as a sibling, or as a trusted friend. You can plan in a way that really makes a lasting impression on the causes and people that you really care about.

Leave a Legacy of Love

For more about how to create your final love letter to your family, call us at (951) 516-2292.