How to Prepare for Making an Estate Plan
Making an estate plan is important for adults in Georgia of all ages, regardless of your income level or your relative health. Many people assume that estate planning is all about deciding who to leave your property to when you die. While making decisions about who will inherit your assets is one component of estate planning, it is just that — one component of many. Having an estate plan is beneficial for many different reasons that include but go well beyond naming beneficiaries. Estate planning also involves making important health care decisions, guardianship decisions, and more.
Given the various things an estate plan can do, how should you prepare for making an estate plan? Consider the following before you meet with a Gwinnett County estate planning attorney.
Make a List of Assets and Gather Relevant Financial Documents
You should come prepared for estate planning with a list of all of your assets — including both tangible and intangible property — and relevant financial documents that make clear how certain assets are held or titled. This will be important for determining how these assets can be transferred or passed to beneficiaries of your choosing.
Consider Your Health Care Wishes
An essential part of estate planning is creating a Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care. In this document, you can name a person you trust to make health care decisions for you in the event you become incapacitated. In addition, you can clarify what types of treatments you do or do not want to receive in the event that you become incapacitated. For example, you can clarify in this document whether or not you want life support, and in what types of circumstances. You can also make other important clarifications about treatment and health care wishes. As such, you should think carefully about your health care wishes before you go into the process of creating this critical document.
Create a List of Relevant People, Including Full Names
Part of the estate planning process will involve naming an executor and alternate executor for your will, deciding who you want to name as beneficiaries to receive your assets, deciding who you want to name as a guardian for your minor child if relevant, deciding who you trust to serve as power of attorney for your financial matters and for health care, and more. Accordingly, you will want to take all of these considerations into account ahead of time and come up with a list.
When you are making that list, it is critical to have full names and details for each of the individuals you are naming. You will need that information to ensure that your estate planning documents meet all legal requirements in Georgia.
Contact a Norcross Estate Planning Attorney
Do you have estate planning questions, or are you ready to sit down with an attorney to begin working on your estate plan? You should get in touch with an experienced Norcross estate planning lawyer at Bowman Law Firm. We can speak with you today to answer any questions you have about estate planning in Georgia, and we can begin working with you on an estate plan with documents and tools that are tailored to your needs. Contact us for more information.
Source:
law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-53/
