When we think about Reno estate planning, our minds often jump to major assets like real estate, bank accounts, retirement funds, and life insurance proceeds. However, there is another aspect that is just as crucial, yet frequently overlooked: our personal belongings, or the 'stuff' that we accumulate over a lifetime. These items, ranging from family heirlooms to everyday objects, carry both monetary and sentimental value, making them an integral part of estate planning.
Balancing Monetary and Sentimental Values
Monetary Value: Items like antique furniture or rare collectibles may have significant financial worth. It's important to accurately appraise these items and ensure they are adequately insured. Considerations like maintenance and storage should also be communicated to the future recipients to preserve their value.
Sentimental Value: Often, items like a grandparent's watch or a handmade quilt carry immense sentimental value. These are the belongings that can lead to emotional disputes among family members. Thoughtful planning and clear documentation of your wishes are crucial in navigating these sensitive areas.
The Logistics of Bequeathing Personal Property
Discussing with Beneficiaries: Open conversations with potential heirs about their interest in specific items are essential. This discussion can reveal who genuinely values an item and who may be burdened by its maintenance or storage requirements.
Multiple Interests: In cases where several beneficiaries desire the same item, consider ways to equitably distribute your assets or find creative solutions to avoid disputes.
Unwanted Items: Sometimes, what matters to us may not hold the same value for our loved ones. Planning for the possibility that no one may want certain items is also necessary. Options like selling, donating, or passing them to acquaintances should be considered.
Incorporating Personal Belongings into Your Estate Plan
Specific Gifts in Wills or Trusts: You can explicitly state in your will or trust who should receive specific items. For example, “I leave my antique vase to my daughter, Susan.” However, any changes to these wishes would require updating the legal documents.
Personal Property Memorandum: This flexible tool allows you to list items and their intended recipients. Unlike wills or trusts, this document can be updated without extensive formalities and is generally easier to amend.
The Residuary Clause: This clause covers any items not specifically mentioned. It can be structured to distribute these remaining belongings among a group of people or to a single individual, like a spouse or child.
The Importance of Professional Guidance
Creating a comprehensive and enforceable estate plan that includes your personal belongings is a complex task. It's advisable to work with an experienced estate planning attorney who can tailor a plan to your unique situation. Their expertise ensures that your wishes are clearly articulated and legally binding, providing peace of mind for both you and your loved ones.
Estate plans are more than your monetary net worth. Categories of your estate can include real estate, pets, possessions and all other property you own. Some people forget how priceless personal property, such as family heirlooms and keepsakes, can be to those you leave behind.
It is important to work out what will happen to these valuable items after your death by creating an estate plan.
Heirlooms have been passed down to family members for generations. These items can vary in monetary value, but the memories attached to them are copious, giving them an emotional and sentimental value that shouldn’t be discarded or auctioned after your passing.
Keepsakes are slightly different from heirlooms because they apply to specific items you owned during your life. These items can be anything from cutlery sets, furniture, or jewelry that you left behind for your family. While these valuable items only have been passed down once, they have nostalgia your family wouldn’t want to lose.
Family members can have different values associated with certain heirlooms and keepsakes. It can be crucial to talk with each family member about their feelings and expectations towards certain items in advance. This common knowledge will help your family avoid unnecessary fighting for heirlooms or keepsakes after your death.
It is a good idea to decide if you need to have your family heirlooms or keepsakes appraised. By doing this, you provide your heirs with the necessary documentation to understand the value of each object passed down to them. Plus, you might realize you want to get some of these items insured due to their worth. Handling this before you pass will make it easier for your heirs to go through the mourning process and avoid unnecessary externalities.
There is no proper way to distribute these valuable and irreplaceable items after your death. Of course, these valuables could end up lost or undervalued if they end up in the wrong hands when there is no plan in place for family heirlooms and keepsakes.
Here are some ways to distribute these precious items to your heirs.
Some people prefer to equally distribute heirlooms and keepsakes to their heirs by focusing on each items' monetary value. An estates planning attorney can offer you guidance when understanding the liquidity of each family heirloom and keepsake.
It is important to note more than two of your heirs may desire the same heirloom or keepsake. You can resolve this dilemma before you pass by creating a personal property memorandum. This document is a chance for you to explicitly state your wishes and avoid any conflict that may come after your death.
One benefit to this type of inheritance planning is that a property personal memorandum is referred to as your last will and identifies who is to receive said property. Also, you don't need to execute a new will or amend your trust if you decide to make modifications to which heirs receive these family heirlooms and keepsakes.
You may prefer to gift special items to your heirs before passing away. Doing this could be a consideration if you find enjoyment in seeing how your family reacts to receiving their heirloom or keepsake.
Of course, you don't want to forget the gift tax you may incur after giving any items to your heirs while alive. Furthermore, you may want to consider if you should factor them into what share of your estate your heirs receive after your death depending on their value.
Anderson Dorn and Rader’s attorneys have the expertise and knowledge to help you create an estate plan that considers all your assets. Family heirlooms and keepsakes are just one piece of the puzzle. Define all your wishes for what your heirs receive with an estate plan to help avoid conflict between your heirs later on.
As millennials (born 1981 to 1996), you are well known for your distinctiveness as a group. Your generation has followed paths and set goals that are decidedly different from those chosen by previous generations. You are highly diverse, better educated, more socially conscious, and wait longer to have families than your parents and grandparents. But one thing you have in common with other generational groups is the need for estate planning. Unfortunately, a startling 79% of millennials do not have basic estate plans in place. Your needs and goals may vary, but having an estate plan in place is crucial for every adult, including millennials. You do not know what the future holds, and we can help you make sure that plans are in place that not only provide for your own future needs but also those of your loved ones and pets.
As a millennial, you may not have accumulated as much wealth as members of older generations, but it is important for you to make sure that your money and property will go to the family members or loved ones you have chosen if something happens to you. If you do not have a will or trust, your money and property will pass to the person designated by state law, which may not be the person you would want to inherit your prized possessions and money. In addition, if you are married and have young children, you need to take steps to ensure that your spouse and children are provided for. A trust is often the best solution: If your spouse inherits your money and property outright under a will, and your spouse eventually remarries, your assets could go to the second spouse instead of your children. In addition, the inheritance will be vulnerable to claims made by your spouse’s creditors. A trust can avoid these results by allowing you to choose who receives your property and money, as well as the timing and size of the gifts.
If you are one of many millennials, especially those who live in large urban areas, who chose either to delay having children or to remain childless, you may have adopted pets that you love and dote upon just as you would a child. Especially if you are single, you should consider a pet trust to provide for your pet’s care if something happens to you. The pet trust can allow you to make arrangements for your pet if you die or are physically unable to care for them yourself. The pet trust can not only specify a caregiver for your pet, it can also provide care instructions and set aside funds sufficient to care for your pet’s needs (medical care, grooming, exercise, etc.). You also have the ability to name an additional person to manage the money you have set aside for your pet, if you would rather have someone other than the caregiver in charge of the money.
Millennials are well known for being socially conscious and wanting to make a positive difference in the world. If you want your money and possessions to support a charitable cause when you pass away, you may be interested in establishing a charitable remainder trust, which enables you to benefit from a stream of income for your own life, with the remaining money in the trust going to a charity you have selected upon your death.
As the cost of college tuition continues to increase, the level of debt millennials have begun their adult lives with is startlingly high. The average student loan debt of adults aged 25 to 34 is $33,000 per borrower. Federal student loans typically are forgiven upon the borrower’s death, but the estates of borrowers who obtained private loans can be pursued by those lenders. In addition, high credit card debt is prevalent among millennials. If you have incurred substantial debt, life insurance sufficient to cover income tax on the cancellation of debt in the case of a federal student loan or to cover the debt itself if a student loan is owed to a private lender or money is owed to a credit card company may be a good solution if you are concerned about the burden your debt could place on your loved ones upon your death.
If you are like many millennials, who are the first generation who grew up using the internet, you have likely amassed a much greater quantity of digital assets than members of previous generations. These assets may include social media accounts, blogs, photographs and videos, financial accounts, and email accounts, among many others. A comprehensive list of these of these assets, which may be among your most prized possessions, as well as the accompanying usernames and passwords, and instructions for their management, is essential to ensure that your wishes are honored if you pass away or become too ill to manage them on your own. Depending upon your wishes, you can appoint a separate person to wind up (or continue managing, e.g., in the case of a blog) these assets and accounts, or you can choose to have your executor or trustee handle this aspect of your estate. The list, which can be incorporated by reference into your other estate planning documents, should be stored in a secure place along with your will and/or trust.
If you are a younger millennial, you may not realize that your parents no longer automatically have the right to make medical decisions on your behalf if you become too ill to make them on your own or if you are unable to communicate your wishes. Even if you are married, your spouse may still need to be properly named in a medical power of attorney to make decisions for you when you cannot. It is also important to designate a trusted person to act on your behalf if your spouse is unavailable. If you fail to have a medical power of attorney prepared, a court proceeding may be necessary to appoint someone to fill that role if, e.g., you are in an automobile accident and are unconscious. You should also consider completing a living will spelling out your wishes regarding medical treatment you want--or don’t want--at the end of your life or if you are in a persistent vegetative state.
Another document that is essential for your care if you were to become unconscious or too ill to make your own financial decisions is a financial power of attorney. It allows a person you have named to pay bills, take care of your home, manage your accounts, and make other money-related decisions for you. Even if you are married, a financial power of attorney is important because any bank accounts or other property that are not jointly owned cannot be managed by your spouse without it—unless your spouse goes to court and asks to be appointed as your guardian, causing unnecessary stress in an already distressing situation. A financial power of attorney can also be helpful if you do a lot of international travel and may occasionally need someone to handle your financial matters while you are out of the country.
You may think that estate planning is only for the elderly. However, even if you are young, an estate plan is crucial, regardless of whether you have accumulated much money or property. A properly executed estate plan provides not only for the well-being of your family, loved ones, and pets, but also allows you to put plans in place if you become ill or are severely injured and cannot make medical and financial decisions for yourself. Call us today at 775-823-9455 to learn more about how we can help you prepare for your future.
If you have answered ‘YES’ to any of these questions, it is a good idea to schedule a Nevada estate planning appointment.
Most of us assume that anyone worth millions of dollars would certainly go to the trouble of creating a comprehensive estate plan, or at the very minimum a Last Will and Testament. As with many assumptions, that one would be incorrect. A surprising number of the rich and famous have died intestate, or without leaving behind a valid Will, including the following:
Sonny Bono: Best known early on as half of “Sonny and Cher”, Bono later went on to become the mayor of Palm Springs, California and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives before dying in a tragic skiing accident in 1998. Bono did not leave behind a Will. Shortly after his death, his wife and mother became embroiled in a legal battle over Bono’s estate.
Steve McNair: The NFL star was shot and killed by an alleged girlfriend at the age of 36. McNair left behind a family and a fortune, but no Will.
DJ AM: Although this name may only be familiar to those of a certain age group, the famous DJ died of a drug overdose in 2009 without having executed a Will prior to his death.
Howard Hughes: The eccentric billionaire who was worth in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion when he died in 1976 failed to leave behind a Will. Although one was produced after his death, it was later determined to be a forgery. Eventually, 22 cousins inherited Hughes’s fortune.
Pablo Picasso: The famous artist died at the age of 91 leaving behind homes, cash and artwork valued in the millions, but did not leave behind a Will. Six years later, at an estimated cost of $30 million, his estate was settled.
You may not be famous or rich, but if die intestate you leave the problems for the courts and the state to decide. It leaves children unprotected, special people in your life disappointed and causes undue financial expense on the estate.
A comprehensive estate plan that was well prepared will include a funeral plan. By creating a funeral plan you will spare your loved ones additional grief and ensure that your wishes are carried out. Once written down, be sure to leave a copy with the trustee or executor of your estate and your estate planning attorney. Consider including the following information in your funeral plan:
A little advance planning can make a very difficult time for your faily much easier.
Each estate plan is as individual as the person who creates the plan. Having said that, one of the most common components to an estate plan is life insurance. Whether or not you should include life insurance as part of your estate plan will depend on a number of factors; however, there are some things you should take into account when making the decision.
Your age and health. Life insurance is less expensive to purchase when you are younger and healthy, meaning you should be able to lock in the best rates. This is also when most people need life insurance for wealth and income replacement -- before they have other estate assets that can be passed down in the event of death.
Know what kind you are buying. Life insurance falls into two basic types -- term and insurance with cash value such as whole life or universal life. Term insurance only provides a death benefit while insurance with a cash value component potentially earns cash value, as the term implies.
Know your objective. If you only want to provide a financial safety net to your family, sticking with term insurance is likely your best bet. Talk to a financial advisor if you are considering whole life insurance. It can be a complicated investment strategy, but there are benefits that are not available to term policy holders.
Decide how much you need. This can change over the years. If you are young and single, you may only need enough to cover debts and your funeral. As you age, you should factor in what it will cost to raise your children if you die before they reach the level of maturity when they will be able to fend for themselves.
Shop around. Just as with other types of insurance policies the policy rates can vary widely. Take your time and compare rates before you commit. You should also be certain you are dealing with a company that is secure, so look at their rating with AM Best or Standard and Poors.
Know when to terminate or convert. Life insurance is rarely the best way to invest your money, but when it comes time to collect, your loved ones will find that you have provided well for them. Review your financial portfolio and your needs on a regular basis not only with your financial adviser, but your attorney, as well. You may find that you no longer need to include a life insurance policy for wealth or income replacement, but it could be useful in your estate plan as protection from estate taxes, expenses of administration, or other financial burdens of which you may not be aware.
