Estate Planning
Benefits of Estate Planning
Control
Ensure that your assets pass to the people you want them to and how you wish.
Asset Protection
Shield your assets from creditors and predators for yourself and your descendants.
Tax Avoidance
Minimize the impact of taxes both during and after your life.
Guardianship
Designate who should take care of your children in the event of your untimely passing and ensure your children and their caregivers are well-provided for.
Planning for Incapacity
With appropriate documents, you can determine who should control your financial and medical decisions in the event that your are no longer able to do so.
Peace of Mind
Most importantly, you'll achieve the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your affairs and your loved ones will be taken care of, even after you're gone.
Three Levels of Planning
You Choose the Level that Fits Your Family
Estate Planning at Lederman Law is not “one size fits all.”
We offer three levels of planning to suit your varying needs, and you get to choose the level of planning that best fits your family.
From starter plans designed primarily for families with young children and not yet much in the way of financial wealth, to more robust plans for well-established families concerned with matters of asset protection, preservation, and increased growth, we have you covered.
Helping You Throughout All Stages of Life
Who do we work with?
- Traditional two parent families or single parents wishing to provide for and protect their children, their assets, and themselves;
- Unmarried couples who are either solidifying their relationship through proper planning or dissolving their relationship with the assistance of caring counsel;
- Blended families negotiating the challenges of creating new relationships with varying expectations;
- High net worth families seeking strategies for minimizing estate and income taxes; and
- Family members or trustees carrying out the legacy left behind through a trust administration.
BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
Book a consultation directly on our calendar by simply choosing a date and time that is most convenient for you.
Personalized Service & Fees
You Choose the Level that Fits Your Family
We have priced our planning for you at the intersection of affordability and effectiveness.
Depending on what you need, our fees typically range from around $1,995 for those not worried about keeping family out of court, up to about $5,995 for an extensive plan that provides significant asset protection after death and maximum protection for your assets from inadvertent loss to the state department of unclaimed property or the court process.
When we meet for your Family Wealth Planning Session, we will review our three planning levels with you, and you will choose your own fee based on your budget and the planning options that are most important to you and your family.
Frequently Asked Questions
A living trust allows you to transfer your assets into your trust to administer for your benefit while you are still alive and it allows you to pass your property to your loved ones outside of the probate process, which can be lengthy and costly. With that said, not everyone needs a living trust. If you don’t have significant assets and if you don’t own any real property, you will not receive the benefits of a living trust. Additionally, individuals who want court supervision over the distribution of their assets might prefer to have a will in place rather than a living trust.
A living trusts takes the place of a will for those who own real property and other significant assets. It makes the administration of an estate easier in that the assets that are included in a living trust are transferred to beneficiaries without the need to open a probate. Although a living trust is costlier to set up compared to a will, it typically eliminates the extra court and attorney fees associated with the probate process.
A living trust also allows you to appoint a successor trustee to manage your assets in case you become incapacitated. If you are unable to manage your own assets, the successor trustee can step into your shoes and take care of your trust’s assets on your behalf. If you do not want to transfer all your assets into your trust, you can set up a durable power of attorney and appoint an agent to manage those assets.
Transferring assets into your trust sounds more complicated than it actually is. If you own real property, a new deed to your property must be prepared and recorded in which the property will be transferred to the trustee of your trust. Typically, individuals or married couples select themselves as initial trustees and name successor trustees in case of incapacity. Our firm will transfer one California deed into your trust and will provide you with instructions on how to transfer the rest of your assets, including additional real estate, bank accounts, stocks, business interests. Personal property, including your furniture, jewelry, and cars, are typically transferred into your trust with a document titled a “general assignment of property.”
Yes, anytime there is a major change in your life, including marriage, divorce, death of your spouse or one of your beneficiaries, when there is an addition to your family, you should modify your estate planning documents according to those changes.
This is one of the most commonly asked questions about estate planning. New York has an estate tax exemption of $5,930,000. It is not portable to your spouse. The current federal estate tax exemption is $11.4 million per individual. For those who have a taxable estate, yes, a living trust allows you to utilize various strategies to reduce, eliminate or defer estate taxes.
Those without children and assets less than $150,000 could probably get away with doing their own “simple will” using an online provider. However, if an individual or family has assets exceeding that amount, or has children, they will benefit from working with an attorney to put together a comprehensive estate plan that will protect their assets, protect their children, and that could actually save their family money.
There are many pitfalls to be aware of when relying on beneficiary designations.
Check out this great article on the benefits of using a revocable trust versus relying on TOD accounts.
While there is no specific rule as to how often one should update their estate planning documents, here are five simple indications …
Asset protection planning can be described as employing legal strategies to preserve and protect a client’s assets. The goal of asset protection …
A Revocable Living Trust is one that the grantor—the individual who creates and funds the trust—sets up during their lifetime. Importantly – …