The Death and Disability Expense Funnel illustrates potential outflows and erosion of wealth due to taxes, fees and court costs. Your assets, which include the residence, commercial real estate, bank accounts, life insurance, investment accounts, business interests, retirement plans (i.e., IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth 401k(s), 403(b), etc.), and personal property, etc. – may be unnecessarily and negatively affected by any one or more of the funnel obstacles. These funnel obstacles can lessen the value of your estate, leaving your family with less.
How to Maintain Control and Get More to Your Family
Planning is the key to retaining control, avoiding administrative headaches and getting more of your assets to your family upon your mental disability or death by way of avoiding undue taxes, fees, and expenses associated with the funnel obstacles. For example, a typical death probate may take a year to close, but many times takes longer. The expenses associated with that probate may also be a significant burden on your family. The cost of death probate varies by state and the complexity of the estate, not limited to family dynamics as well as the composition of assets, and fees can range from a couple thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. A proper estate plan may allow you and your family to bypass the probate courts and save time, money and grief.
Proper estate planning can provide control of your wealth by allowing you to avoid unnecessary funnel obstacles and:
Maintain control of your assets while you are alive and mentally able.
Maintain control over how assets are managed upon your mental disability.
Effectively and efficiently distribute assets upon death.
Control and protect assets after death (i.e., protect children from divorce, bad spending habits, children’s creditors and the like).
Contact one of Kelleher + Holland’s estate planning attorneys to help you maintain control, avoid stress and alleviate unwanted expenses leaving more to your family.
