ESTATE PLANNING: PLANNING IS THE REAL GIFT

One concern of many estate plans is wealth preservation and transfer. Often, parents want to see the fruits of their lifetime's labor benefit their children and grandchildren. A comprehensive estate plan can help in this goal, both by helping to develop a clear strategy for preserving and protecting that wealth while the parents are still living and efficiently transferring those assets to the children when the time comes.

While most children would be understandably grateful when receiving any inheritance, no matter the size or form, but a well-ordered estate plan can make that transfer go much more smoothly. It can also ensure that the estate administration results in minimal costs to the estate, such as unplanned taxes and problematic litigation.

By creating a comprehensive estate plan, you can ensure that your wishes are carried out and that your goals, whatever they may be, are achieved. But it also something else. It allows you to set the expectations of your potential heirs, thereby reducing the likelihood that someone will feel they were unfairly treated.

It also has the added benefit of tying up all of the potential loose ends at the close of your life and relieving your spouse or children of the difficulty of dealing with the numerous issues that can arise during an Ohio probate of an estate. Depending on the design of your estate plan, you may be able to eliminate the need for probate altogether and greatly reduce the costs to the estate.

Creating a seamless and stress-free transfer of wealth, as well as taking care of such details as choosing a funeral home or other mundane, but nonetheless necessary, tasks. This can eliminate much of the stress that can occur when a family is still grieving and can be one of the real gifts of an estate plan.