Your Year-End Estate Planning Checkup

As the year winds down, many of us turn our attention to financial planning, taxes, and preparations for the holidays. It is also an ideal time to review your estate plan and make sure that it still accurately reflects your goals.

Estate planning is not something that should be completed once and then forgotten. As your life changes, a brief annual review of your plan can help ensure that your estate planning documents still mirror your wishes and that the people you selected to act for you are still right for those roles.

Heading into the final months of the year, use this simple checklist to evaluate your estate plan:

• Review your Last Will and Testament. Consider whether the beneficiaries, executors, guardians for minor children, and any other provisions in your Will continue to reflect your desires. Changes in family, relationships, finances, or property may mean it is time for an update.
• Revisit your Power of Attorney. A Power of Attorney allows someone you trust to handle financial and legal matters on your behalf. Consider whether the person you have appointed is still appropriate and whether your document continues to meet your needs.
• Examine your Health Care Proxy and Living Will. Confirm that the individuals you have chosen to make health care decisions for you if you cannot make them for yourself remain people whom you trust, are aware of their appointment, and understand your preferences.
• Check your beneficiary designations and asset ownership. Review how significant property and accounts are titled because ownership can affect how assets pass at death. Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and transfer/payable-on-death accounts generally pass according to their respective beneficiary designations rather than under your Will. Make sure these designations are current and coordinated with your overall plan, particularly after a marriage, divorce, birth, death, or other major life event.
• Consider whether a trust belongs in your plan. Trusts are not only for the very wealthy. Depending on your circumstances, a trust may help with asset management and protection, planning for minor children or other beneficiaries, privacy, and avoiding or simplifying probate proceedings.
• Take stock of major life changes. A marriage, divorce, birth of a child or grandchild, retirement, significant change in assets, purchase or sale of real estate, or death in the family can all affect an estate plan. If something important changed in your life this year, your documents may need to change as well.
• Audit your digital life. Planning for digital assets and online records is a valuable, yet often overlooked, part of estate planning. Consider your email, online banking, financial accounts, cloud-stored records, photographs, social-media accounts, and access to phones and computers. Maintain a current, secure inventory of important accounts and instructions for accessing them — such as through a password manager or other secure system — and make sure a trusted person knows how to locate that information.
• Make sure your loved ones know where to find important information. Even a well-prepared estate plan is less helpful if no one knows where the documents are located. Keep original documents and other important information in a secure but accessible place and ensure that your executor or another trusted person knows where to find them.

Finish the Year With an Up-to-Date Plan

You do not necessarily need to change your estate plan every year, but reviewing it annually is a worthwhile habit. A simple checkup today can help identify outdated information before it creates confusion, expense, or unintended results.

If you have had a major life change — or cannot remember the last time you reviewed your estate-planning documents — this is a good time to take another look. The Montalto Law Firm can help you determine whether your current documents continue to reflect your needs, wishes, and goals for the future.

For more information, visit montaltolawfirm.com or call 845.871.2013.