Drawing upon RWA Wealth Partners’ decades of experience, our comprehensive estate and legacy planning checklist includes a glossary of key terms and identifies five critical estate planning must-haves.
Once completed, your final wishes will be honored and your family will be unburdened, with appropriate time to grieve instead of picking up the pieces you left behind.
Estate Planning Checklist Includes:
#1—Legal Documents: Required forms to guarantee your assets are distributed as you intended, (i.e., likely requires more than a will).
#2—Health Care Directives: In the event of your incapacitation, you need six health care advance directives (documents). That’s right—six, with two key items that are often overlooked, possibly decreasing the impact of medical treatments.
#3—Income Distribution and Spending Plans: Heirs often don’t know where your assets are held. Therefore, identifying four key income sources is critical for transferring assets to beneficiaries.
#4—Government and Court-Issued Documents: There are seven confidential items heirs may need to facilitate your estate plan wishes. Can they find them?
#5—Proof of Ownership: Informing your family about these 11 assets and obligations is important. Otherwise, they may be unprepared to manage your debt and unable to locate your assets.
You can’t always control the future. However, you can control your medical care and legacy wishes.
Preparing your estate
This checklist details many of the necessary materials to gather to save your loved ones hours of effort, keep you in control of your medical decisions and safeguard your valuable assets.
Here are some other important considerations:
Have you established designated beneficiaries for all of your retirement accounts? If so, have you reviewed your choices recently to confirm they are aligned with your present intentions?
After death, do you want to be buried or cremated and have you indicated this anywhere in writing?
Is there any intention to donate estate assets to a particular non-profit organization or charity?
Is the person you’ve named as executor of your estate aware of their role?
Glossary
BENEFICIARY: Person who receives property from an estate through the right to receive a bequest or income.
BEQUEST: A gift of personal property, including stocks, bonds, jewelry and cash.
DECEDENT: An individual who has died.
ESTATE: The entirety of the decedent’s ownership of money, material goods and property.
EXECUTOR/EXECUTRIX: Person named in a will and appointed by the court to carry out terms of the will and manage the decedent’s estate.
PROBATE: The legal process by which the decedent’s assets are collected and distributed to beneficiaries of the estate.
TESTAMENTARY: Relating to a will or other document effective upon death.
WILL: Document specifying beneficiaries to inherit decedent’s estate and naming a beneficiary (executor) to manage the estate and distribute assets
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